Conference noted::sf

>    Anyone read and/or seen the movie of Day Of The Triffids?  

The Triffids would never survive with today's 'boom boxes'. :-)

I have seen the VHS version in local (Nashua, NH) tape/record stores.
It goes for about 10$.  I have never seen a Beta version, but then
the stores generlaly do not stock them.

-Joe

    	Are you referring to the 1963 or 1986 film versions?
    
    	Larry
    

    Must be the 1986 version, broadcast as a mini-series on A&E and
    PBS. *That* is extraordinarily faithful to the novel. The 1963
    film, which is what's available on videotape, barely pays lip
    service to the book.
    
    --- jerry

    Must have been the 86 version, I didn't even know there was an earlier
    one, but I saw it on PBS within the last year.  Anyone know if that's
    available on video tape?  I'd prefer Beta (I'm funny about quality...),
    but might be able to deal with VHS.  Unfortunately, I forgot to
    set my VCR up and missed taping one of the segments.
    
    Willie

    re:.4
    
    As far as I know, it's not on tape. I wish it was. I've managed
    to miss it every time it's been on. I know of its faithfulness
    to the book only because of the raves of someone on Usenet (Mark
    Leeper), who I know is a big John Wyndham fan.
    
    --- jerry

    If the movie ends with lotsa sea water it was the '63 version.
                                 
    I was so impressed with the "PBS" showing I stayed up 'til the
    wee hours of the morning taping both segments.  I have a warm spot
    in my heart for people who figure since the book was good why change
    a lot of it?  They brought the reality from the book into the film.
    
    The British" remakes" use a lot less mood music, isn't it amazing
    how well it works....
    
    							Don

    If my memory has not completely failed me, the "Day of the
    Triffids" first  appeared as a several part serial in the
    old COLLIERS magazine.  I first read it while in high school
    (I think!), which would have placed that in the late 1950's.
    
    I really would like to find another copy of the book to re-read.
    The original version pretty much started me on a life-long habit
    of reading Science Fiction.
    
    The ending of the "Day of the Triffids" in its original version
    left the reader at a point of seeing the hopelessness of the
    desperate survivors' situation.  They were running out of liquid
    inflammables, which was the only weapon they had that would keep
    the Triffids away from the survivors' final sanctuary.

    re:.7
    
    Your memory hasn't *completely* failed you. DotT *did* first
    appear as a five-part serial in COLLIER'S, but it was from
    6 Jan - 3 Feb 1951. You must have read old copies.
    
    --- jerry

Yeah, I read the book, a long, long time ago.

However, someone gave me a copy of the film.

The film has a certain naive charm.  One of the things that especially amused
me about it weas the utter lack of sense of many of the people.  In one scene,
a train comes boiling into a station (at the end of the line) under a full
head of steam, because the engineer and fireman are both blind.  If I had
control of a train, and I suddenly couldn't see (and found out that neither
could my partner), I'd at least throttle back, and most probably stop the train
completely.  Likewise the blind air crew (I sure wouldn't have taken the thing
off autopilot, if I couldn't see what I was doing), etc.

No matter....

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re -.1
    
    The plane was a gonner because there wasn't anything like ILS or the
    sort for aircraft.  The train I agree with.  There have been dead-man
    switches on locomotive engine throttles since the late 19th century. 
    All he had to do was turn loose and the train stops.

    But isn't there an implication in the film that people have realised
    that EVERYONE is blind and that therefore their chances of
    survival/avoiding a lingering death by starvation/triffid sting are
    slight.
    
    I've always taken the "world gone mad" bit to be due to the fact that
    people have realised that the quickest way out is violent death.
    
    Could be wrong - 
    
    K
    

    Could someone fill me in on the plot of this movie, please?
    I saw it, but I think I'm a bit confused about some of the
    things that were discussed...what's this about people being
    blind?  I don't remember that part.  I do remember flamethrowers,
    tho...and maybe an improvised electricified fence.  Do I have 
    the right movie?
    
    B.

    The earth's population is "treated" to a spectacular meteor shower.
    It later turns out that anyone who saw the meteor shower is blinded.
    This is an adaptation, we presume, by the things that came down in the
    shower, semi-mobile and very carnivorous plant-like things dubbed
    "triffids" because (1) the shower came from the direction of the
    Triffid Nebula and (2) it's a neat noise.  The triffids are mindless
    and slow, but the blindness makes the odds pretty even as they shuffle
    and slither about, stinging people to death with poisonous thorns and
    then, I suppose, devouring them as mulch.
    
    The movie plot follows the adventures of two or three separate groups
    of people as they frantically race for survival in a world gone
    chaotic, evading triffids, escaping from mobs of blind people desparate
    to find a sighted guide, teaming up with small fortress-like
    settlements of blind people, etc.  Meanwhile, an acid-tongued scientist
    and his alienated wife, who managed to remain sighted, discover a
    relatively quick and easy way to dispose of triffids (revealed after
    the form-feed).
    
    <SPOILER WARNING>
    
    
    
    The things dissolve in salt water.
    
    Caveat lector: I haven't seen the movie in years.  I also understand it
    wasn't much like the book.  The book was made into a British
    mini-series a few years ago; perhaps that was a closer rendition.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I should have made it clear that it is only the SEEDS of triffids that
    came down in the meteor shower.  We don't let them stick around long
    enough to find out how the seeds got into space in the first place.
    
    ESW

	I've seen the miniseries twice, and yes, it's closer to the book than
the movie was (At least, according to descriptions of the movie given here -
I've not seen it myself. One important difference is that in the mini-series,
the triffids didn't come down in the shower - they were being bred here on
earth in triffid farms. I can't remember the reason for this - some product of
their "bodies" (they were plants, actually) was being harvested much. The main
character was in hospital during the shower - I think he'd been stung across the
face by a young triffid (He worked in a triffid farm, a fact which meant he
found it easier to survive later). Thus, he could see.

	Not so the rest of the world; humanity blinded fell into chaos - slowly
at first, but then more quickly as the triffids slowly escaped and took over.
This all happens quite quickly; most of the series (and the book) is about the
sighted people who are left, and how they interact with each other and other
groups.

	The ending isn't nearly so "neat" as the movie's.

	Peter.

    Peter's synopsis covers it I think except that the byproduct of
    Triffids was oil.  The Triffids just "appear" over a number of years -
    the narrator of the book recollects one growing as a weed in the garden
    -his father became proud of the size of the plant and only killed it
    when it stung the narrator - fortunately not fatally since it was a
    young plant - he later goes on to work on the commercially organised
    triffid farms and is stung again - landing him in hospital with eyes
    bandaged at the time of the fatal meteor storm.
    
    The implication is that its a planned takeover of earth - one or two
    plants, then humans realise their worth and organise breeding
    programmes - then the meteor storm and wipeout the humans.
    

*************** SPOILER ALERT ***********************************



























 >   The implication is that its a planned takeover of earth - one or two
 >   plants, then humans realise their worth and organise breeding
 >   programmes - then the meteor storm and wipeout the humans.

	I thought it turned out that the meteor shower was actually a nuclear
[armed|powered|whatever] satellite, hich burned up on re-entry, scattering
the world with debris and "harmful radiation". Not so much as a "nukes be
bad" message as a message that we need not be overrun by an invasion. It
wouldn't take much of a change for other creatures to out-compete us; it
needn't be an external , more advanced power which defeats us.

	This is a bit of a running theme in John Wyndam's books, from what
I've heard.

	Peter.

    Could be interpretation, but I thought that that was one of the
    "explanations" given over the radio/TV by the scientists of the time to
    explain the spectacular light show...
    
    Yeah - you could interpret as -1 - I just read it as a bit of "realism"
    injected to set the scene.
    
    K
    

    I seem to remember that the Triffid seeds were spread accidentaly
    whilst being transported in a plane which crashed. The meteor
    shower/light show was purely coincidental. I'm not sure, but I think
    the Triffids were bred by man, and not extra-terrestrial in origin. The
    name _Triffid_ was given to them because they had three ambulatory
    roots on which they walked.
    
    If I remember, I'll check tonight.
    
    Clive

My recollection is that the movie and the mini-series differed in a number
of ways noted in the just-previous replies.

In the movie, I believe that the origin of the triffids was extraterestrial,
and the connection with blindness was explicit.
In the mini-series, the triffids were being bred and had been around
for some time.  The oil connection (mobile jojoba plants, sort of)
sounds familiar.  At the end of the series, the protagonist comes
to the conclusion that the blindness is a result of some orbitting
blindness-inducing weapon gone bad or purposely deployed.
Thus the confluence of evils is not intentional, but negatively synergistic.

I recall the movie as cut from the same cloth as other sci-fi of the '50s,
but much better tailored.  I remember it fondly.

- tom]

Article: 344
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews #17: John Wyndham
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 27 Aug 93 12:27:58 GMT
 
		Belated Reviews #17:  John Wyndham
 
John Wyndham was another English author who wrote excellent science
fiction for a largely mainstream audience.  Although his writing career
spanned over three decades, he did his best writing in the 1950s.  His
writing doesn't lend itself to the tidy generalizations I prefer ("X wrote
romances about left-handed redheads..."), so I'll settle for describing
the books individually.  I *will* generalize to the extent of saying that 
they were written to last:  They were effective three or four decades ago 
and they still work:
 
"The Midwich Cuckoos" (***+).  The cuckoo is best known for its habit of
leaving eggs in the nests of other birds.  Insufficiently selective instinct
drives those birds to hatch and raise the young cuckoos, often at the expense
of their own offspring.  It would take a somewhat more sophisticated version
of that trick to take in a human.
 
On September 26th, 19__, *something* happens in the village of Midwich, as
a result of which every woman of childbearing years becomes pregnant.  The
children who are born nine months later are 'obviously' human, though they
have some unusual features -- most notably golden eyes and telepathy --
and they are raised as human babies, mostly by their 'parents'.  The
childrens' telepathic powers complicate the process:  How does one raise
a baby that can force its parents to do what it wants?
 
"Trouble With Lichen" (***+), my personal favorite, also raises important
questions, at least in passing, but in a more whimsical manner.  When
biochemical researcher Diana Brackley discovers that the lichen she is
investigating can slow ageing, her immediate reaction is to trumpet it as
the discovery of the millenium.  However, to quote from the book, "The closer
the attention she gave the matter, the more dismayed she became by the number
and variety of interests that were *not* going to welcome the lichen
derivative."  Even something so apparently desirable as a longevity drug
requires a constituency -- especially since the lichen is in very short
supply -- so Diana Brackley opens a very exclusive beauty salon.
 
"The Day of the Triffids" (***) is the closest Wyndham comes to a horror
novel.  (My personal criterion for distinguishing between horror and sf/f
is whether the horror is primarily visceral or intellectual.  While many
die in this book, Wyndham is more interested in the choices of the survivors
than in dwelling upon death and danger.  This approach does not lend itself
to film nearly as well as typical horror, which is why books like Wyndham's
tend to make uninspired movies.)  The book begins by introducing two science-
fictional elements which combine with disastrous results.  First, there are 
the triffids -- a (bioengineered?) carnivorous plant with a difference.  Make
that three differences:  They're ambulatory, they have a long 'whip' with a 
venomous sting, and they're economically important enough (oil) to be worth 
cultivating anyway.  They're slow enough that reasonable precautions 
suffice...until the second element (another product of technology?) strikes 
most of the human race blind...and vulnerable.
 
"The Chrysalids" (***+), also published as "Re-Birth", is a post-holocaust
novel.  Years after the bombs fell, there are still only a few pockets of
humanity left, and the radiation has left a legacy of mutated and damaged
genes.  Mutants are killed:  If a calf is born with two heads, it is
slaughtered.  If a crop comes up wrong, the field is burned.  And abnormal
babies are killed.  (Though mutants who live long enough before being
discovered may simply be sterilized and exiled to the badlands, pretty
much a death sentence in itself.)  One gets the impression that the
obsession with mutants may have started out as a matter of survival, but 
became entrenched in religion.
 
There's not much question as to what's normal and what isn't -- two arms,
two legs, head in the usual place, the right number of fingers and toes,
and so on at great length.  There's nothing in the rules about a group of
kids who happen to be able to communicate with each other telepathically,
however, and a society that views mutation as literally demonic is not 
likely to take a measured view of an indetectible mutation.  The kids do have
the sense to keep their difference to themselves.  But people notice things, 
neighbors talk, relatives compare notes...and one day the local inquisition 
shows up.
 
John Wyndham also wrote "The Kraken Wakes" (**), "Chocky" (**), "Consider
Her Ways and Others" (*), "The Outward Urge", and "The Seeds of Time".  
(I haven't read the last two.)
 
%A  Wyndham, John
%T  The Midwich Cuckoos
%T  Trouble With Lichen
%T  The Day of the Triffids
%T  The Chrysalids
 
Standard introduction and disclaimer for Belated Reviews follows.

Belated Reviews cover science fiction and fantasy of earlier decades.
They're for newer readers who have wondered about the older titles on the
shelves, or who are interested in what sf/f was like in its younger days.
The emphasis is on helping interested readers identify books to try first, 
not on discussing the books in depth.
 
A general caveat is in order:  Most of the classics of yesteryear have not
aged well.  If you didn't encounter them back when, or in your early teens,
they will probably not give you the unforced pleasure they gave their
original audiences.  You may find yourself having to make allowances for
writing you consider shallow or politics you consider regressive.  When I
name specific titles, I'll often rate them using the following scale:
 
**** Recommended.
***  An old favorite that hasn't aged well, and wouldn't get a good
	reception if it were written today.  Enjoyable on its own terms.
**   A solid book, worth reading if you like the author's works.
*    Nothing special.
 
Additional disclaimers:  Authors are not chosen for review in any particular
order.  The reviews don't attempt to be comprehensive.  No distinction is 
made between books which are still in print and books which are not.
 
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
 
Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser