Brian Aldiss is notorious for coining the phrase ‘cosy catastrophe’, which he aimed at fellow science fiction writer John Wyndham, in particular for his works The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. By this term, Aldiss means that ‘the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off.’
As Wyndham is one of my favourite authors of all time, I naturally bristle at this slingshot and find myself champing at the bit to leap to his defence. And it was during recent viewings of the TV shows The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead that I began to see parallels with the world Wyndham describes in the two novels mentioned above – and I started to formulate my defence.
Here I intend to set out a few similarities between a 1950s-style apocalypse (with carnivorous plants and oceanic aliens) and a modern one (with flesh-craving zombies), and illustrate why Wyndham’s novels are no more guilty of ‘cosiness’ than the works of Robert Kirkman.
Please note: the following text includes spoilers for anyone who has not read these books or watched these shows.
The hospital awakening
In Triffids, the protagonist Bill Masen awakes in hospital with his eyes bandaged following an accident with triffid venom. In TWD, the protagonist Rick Grimes awakes from a coma in hospital after being shot in the line of duty. Both characters venture out and find themselves in a world they do not recognise; due to mass blinding in Triffids and the zombie plague in TWD, humans have been routed and bloodthirsty creatures roam the streets. Our heroes must not only evade destruction, they must also figure out what has happened during their ‘absence’ and feel their way forward.
While Bill might indeed be said to be lucky at having escaped the mass blinding, his experience in the hospital is far from coddled. After helping a doctor to his office, supposedly to telephone for help, he witnesses the doctor throwing himself to his death from a fifth-floor window. Hotel suites and automobiles are presumably very far from his mind at this point; as he says, ‘I sat here for some minutes while I steadied up, and let the sick feeling subside. After a while it did.’
So far, so disturbing.
The isolation of water
In Kraken, the threat comes from not only the aliens who dwell in the depths of our oceans, but also the rising sea levels they have caused in their bid to take over the planet. The advice of geographer Dr Bocker is: ‘Find a nice, self-sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.’ In FTWD, our band of survivors find their way on to a luxury boat off the coast of California, where – they hope – they will be safe from the marauding dead who prowl on land.
However, the characters in FTWD soon find that the ‘walkers’ are less of a problem than the other humans they encounter on the seas; piracy is rife, and isolation is starting to take its toll. One family, living on an island in what might be described as rather ‘cosy’ circumstances, soon falls prey to despair and thence destruction: proof that fear and terror do not stem only from physical deprivation but also from social disconnection. Similarly, in Kraken, as Mike and Phyllis sail to their intended ‘self-sufficient hilltop’, they are very aware that ‘Perhaps we shall find only bullets where we try to land, but even that will be better than slow starvation in bitter cold.’
It is certainly beginning to seem that, even with an abundance of material comforts, the lack of human companionship – by which I mean more than just ‘getting the girl’ – is likely to be the final blow to a species that is, at heart, a social animal.
The fancy apartment
Perhaps the clearest target of Aldiss’s jibe is the scene in Triffids where Bill and Josella take refuge in a luxury flat. They enjoy running water, try on the absent owner’s expensive clothes and crack open the sherry; we also get to hear Josella’s back story, which is a tale of spoiled privilege if ever there was one. Taken at face value, these amusements certainly seem a rather fun way to ride out the apocalypse – but let’s turn to TWD for a lesson in the dangers of taking things at face value.
Time and again, Rick’s band of survivors come across homesteads – Hershel’s farm, Woodbury, Terminus, Alexandria – that appear to offer the shelter they have been seeking; and yet, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that behind the tempting façades lie yet more horrors. Whether this is a barnful of walkers, a psychotic leader, cannibalism or a fatal naivety about the new world, what initially seemed so full of promise is revealed for what it really is: too good to be true.
The apartment in Triffids performs a similar function; indeed, Wyndham spells it out for us. As Josella appears in her borrowed finery, Bill recognises what she is doing:
‘”You’re saying goodbye?”
A different look came into her eyes.
“So you do understand. I hoped you would.”
“I think I do. I’m glad you’ve done it. It’ll be a lovely thing to remember,” I said. [……] “Thank you for doing it. A gesture – and a reminder that with all the faults there was so much beauty.”’
They are not treating the apocalypse as a personal windfall, but recognising that everything they knew and enjoyed before has now gone; drawing a line under it so that they can leave it behind and move forward into whatever future awaits them, however terrifying. It’s closure, pure and simple.
A light in the night
Shortly after Bill and Josella say goodbye to the world they knew, they spot ‘a bright beam like that of a searchlight’ in the London night. This is reflected in FTWD when Travis’s son Chris sees a light signalling from the part of their neighbourhood known as the Dead Zone. The two lights represent very different circumstances, however. In Triffids, it emanates from a group actively trying to form a community and attract new members; in FTWD it is from civilians being targeted by military fire in a bid to stem the plague – even though many of those being killed are not themselves infected.
The storyline in Wyndham’s novel initially seems to offer a positive contrast to the gruelling developments of the TV show: it seems our protagonists are being granted an easy path, an instant society to join, to counter their loneliness. But things don’t quite work out that way. As the book progresses, they find out that not all societies are formed in a way – or with rules – they find amenable, and eventually they decide to break away and make a go of it on their own.
In short, having already had to come to terms with the pain of social isolation, the characters now have to cope with the dawning knowledge that even human contact and community is no guarantee of security and contentment. The discovery that everyone is not all in it together is perhaps the biggest blow of them all.
In conclusion
This is a very brief exploration of the reasons why I believe life in Wyndham’s apocalypse(s) is not the picnic Aldiss claims it is. Girls, hotels and cars are all very well, but even the most dedicated socialite would surely agree that these mean nothing without trust, companionship and shared goals.
Yet I will add one conciliatory comment: the two novels, Triffids and Kraken, do end on a hopeful note, with the protagonists looking forward to a more positive, comfortable future – or, at least, one in which they have a chance of fighting back against the alien threat. In Triffids, one group of survivors has settled on an island, which they are managing to keep free of the murderous plants by carrying out a sweep each spring; in Kraken, the waters have stopped rising, and a weapon is in development that can potentially destroy the ‘Bathies’. Both sets of characters feel that the worst is over, and they can now start planning a new life, a fresh world order.
Perhaps the ‘cosiness’ of Wyndham’s novels stems from the fact that they end on this note of hope rather than doom: the natural human inclination to keep going, to push forward against the odds, to create a better future. In TWD and FTWD we see, time and again, hopes dashed: the cure that doesn’t exist; imagined sanctuaries that prove to be human abattoirs; plans for crop growing threatened by a barbed-wire-clad-baseball-bat-wielding psychopath demanding tributes. Finding the will to go on in such circumstances is surely dependent on sustaining a sense of faith that things must (and will) get better. Perhaps the only difference between the ‘cosy’ 1950s-style apocalypse and the brutal 21st-century one is that Wyndham’s stories end by suggesting that ‘better’ is within reach, whereas Kirkman continues to create fresh challenges for his characters to face.
The penultimate paragraph in Triffids offers one more striking parallel with what Rick’s group might find themselves hoping for as they face down Negan:
‘It seems unlikely that anything will come of Torrence’s neo-feudal plan, though a number of his seigneuries do still exist with their inhabitants leading, so we hear, a life of squalid wretchedness behind their stockades. But there are not so many of them as there were. Every now and then Ivan reports that another has been overrun, and that the triffids which surrounded it have dispersed to join other sieges.’
Maybe the ultimate point being made, by both Wyndham and Kirkman, is that humans’ greatest advantage comes when they can band together against a common enemy – and their greatest peril comes when they fight amongst themselves.
© Gwyneth Marshman 2018
Originally published (with slight differences) on the Bookylicious website (2017)