Day 18--18/501
General Musings: Today I was downtown at a major flood call that displaced 400 people--it was a tough day but I think we did a good job with a tough situation.
Yesterday I took a test to see if my vasectomy was successful--it was of course humiliating and comical in equal parts. One-guy-one-cup says it all [I'd love to include a segue video here but this is not that kind of webpage]. Wish me luck with the results since I'd like to think having someone go medieval on my scrotum was for something.
After my lab visit I went to the mall and bought socks and underwear since I had successfully worn through all but three pairs of socks. The remaining trio were all running socks and didn't look too sharp in regular attire. Also, my underwear stock always needs replenishing--once I'm down to two pairs that usually raises a flag. I rarely shop and I found the activity to be both challenging and exhausting.
A good day to finish my book and get caught up on my school work. I am going to get back with my cycling workouts now that I have a Lemonde Spinmaster and no excuses. Feel free to call me for a workout--I'm always interested.
Running Page Count: 4,837
Today's Title (Science Fiction): John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids
Preface: I had confused the Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles with The Day of the Triffids and had assumed the plot was about cute fuzzy little beings that multiplied quickly--my bad. However my error led me to watch the classic Star Trek episode again for fun and I just love Bones' line "they reproduce at will. And brother, have they got a lot of will! ".
The Day of the Triffids is in fact a 1951 post-apocalyptic story that deals primarily with sociological imperatives and choices in times of crisis. John Wyndham had written several sci-fi stories before but this was the first book published under his real name. The book conceptually owes a great deal to H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds but is really the first post-apocalyptic novel in the modern strain. Reading the book it is easy to understand the current fascination with Zombie films and stories--funny (often unintentionally), scary, philosophical, and sometimes profound the book is nothing if not archetypal. Did I mention that I love zombies?
The Book: Bill Masen is in a London hospital due to an injury on the job. His head is bandaged and since he cannot see he misses the most extraordinary comet and meteor shower that has everyone talking. Bill is a bourgeois priss, a pussy, a whiner, and a geek so when he wakes up the day after the astronomical event and doesn't get his tea on time he gets into a tizzy and begins to come up with worst case scenarios. Did I mention that Bill is biologist working with killer plants?
Oddly, the world is indeed in a worst case scenario and everyone that Bill meets up with is blind and highly anxious. In short order Bill abandons the hospital patients, begins looting, watches the enslavement of sighted people by the blind masses, and is witness (and a party) to serial suicide by the newly blind. What boggles the mind is that it has only been a few hours since the crisis developed! My God the British are pussies! How did they manage to beat the Nazis? But I digress.
Bill ends up in the company of a beautiful and practical young woman (Josella) who is infamous for writing a book on-- (wait for it computer nerds) sex. Bill and Josella witness more suicide and dying while eating crumpets, courting, correcting Latin grammar and Byronic poetry and waxing philosophical about ethical issues. Soon they are separated and experience the new world through different realized paradigms of various groups of survivors.
I don't want to spoil the story for you haven't read the book and I have omitted some big plot points. Suffice to say the world is never the same and Bill and humanity learn some hard lessons.
Grade: D
Observations: This is pretty juvenile stuff and the contrivances in the plot are so outlandish they make you laugh out loud. Killer plants and a blindness causing meteor storm seem a bit far-fetched to me. Wyndham treats both the protagonist's temporary blindness and the mass blind affliction like it was super-herpes. If I was blind I'd punch him in the mouth (I'd pretend to be feeling his face and then wham!). Wyndham obviously doesn't make much for his residuals on talking books or braille translations.
The protagonist Bill is so egomaniacal and preposterous that he seems a mix of James Bond and that Latin professor who had your number. Although my edition had a preface written by Desmond Morris pleading the superior writing of Wyndham over contemporary popular writers like Stephen King I don't buy it. Wyndham is an erudite thinker but a plodder of a writer and ought to learn the mechanics of story.
Also, who smokes in a hospital? I know it is set in the fifties but was that ever a cool thing to do?
Segues: There is a British film that makes the lame science even lamer with special effects from sock puppeters (skip it). Recently, the book cum film Blindness by Jose Saramago deals with a plague of blindness in which the victims are rounded up and imprisoned by society. Bill from Triffids would definitely be in favour of that!
Tomorrow's Book (Modern Fiction): Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient 19/501
