If you're a fan of the science fiction writer John Wyndham, most famous for his novel The Day of the Triffids, and believe that there’s nothing more to enjoy, you may well be mistaken (or perhaps not?). More than 41 years after his death, Penguin has published a new John Wyndham novel called Plan for Chaos. According to the Irish Times, Liverpool University Press, holders of the Wyndham archive, published Plan to Chaos last year as a specialist book with a high price tag but has now released it to mainstream booksellers. Wyndham wrote Plan for Chaos in 1951, just before he wrote his walking plant masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids.
Unfortunately, the Irish Times called Plan for Chaos “dull, mostly humourless and pseudo-American” which doesn’t make me want to rush out and buy it - and perhaps explains why its been buried in the archives for so many years.
“While it starts promisingly in a lively detective noir style,” the article’s writer, Tom Moriarty, reveals, “it’s downhill in Nazi flying saucers from the first seig heil on page 58.”
The Telegraph was slightly kinder, calling the novel “never less than entertaining, even when just entertainingly daft.”
Still, as a big fan of Wyndham I’m intrigued to see what it’s like. I’ve received so much enjoyment from re-reading The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Midwich Cuckoos, and all Wyndham’s other great works over the years that anything new is more than welcome, even if it’s not an out and out Wyndham classic. The reference to Nazi flying saucers also sounds intriguing and slightly bizarre even for a Wyndham novel.
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