Next you'll be asking where the 50 million blind people have got to and why there are so few bodies in the streets.'Īn alarm woke me and I was bundled into the back of a lorry. 'Do you not think it strange that almost everyone was awake in the middle of the night and got blinded?' We need to start a new world of the remaining sighted, with just a few blind bints to up the baby numbers.' 'The name's Michael Beadley and the time has come for a didactic interlude on the nature of a post-apocalyptic society. 'Welcome to our merry group,' said a bearded cove, puffing on his pipe. We stole a Land Rover and stocked up with triffid-bashing armaments in St James's before spotting smoke coming from the university. But he wouldn't have wanted to be disabled.' 'Poor pater blinded, then killed by triffids. 'I feel so guilty I had a hangover and missed the comet,' she sighed, nobly repressing her tears. 'So you're the risqué Josella,' I exclaimed. 'I once wrote a book called Sex Is My Adventure.'

'How exciting! We're both sighted! I'm Josella Playton.' The name seemed familiar, yet I couldn't quite place her.

I biffed the cad who was harassing her and sent him packing.

Having eyes was a grim business, but I concluded the women were probably happy to let the men take charge and continued up an alley where I heard an upper-class woman plaintively calling for help. On reaching Piccadilly Circus I encountered 50 blind wretches abusing some women. Perhaps those walking, talking triffids which we had grown from a few seeds donated by a Soviet defector, yet which had mysteriously taken over the world, were to blame for the pickle we found ourselves in. 'How very distressing,' I replied, not wondering if his wife had not perhaps been a little hasty as at that time she had no way of knowing if the blindness was but temporary.Īs I proceeded carefully towards central London, incurious that the sudden blindness had somehow also managed to largely depopulate the city, I reflected on my career as a biologist.

The day of the triffids by john wyndham