John Wyndham: biography, books

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

John Wyndham is known to all lovers of the fantastic world of literature. His books captivated readers with their originality of plots and relevance of ideas. All the works of the author are concentrated on disasters in which people, trying to adapt to the situation, show extraordinary abilities and qualities. The writer reveals the characters in emergency situations, which makes his fantasy novels unique.

Young years

John Wyndham was born in July 1903 in Great Britain. When the boy was 8 years old, his parents divorced, and the future writer and his brother were forced to spend their entire childhood in closed schools and boarding schools. His father was a famous lawyer, and the boy wanted to grow up and master the same profession.

In 1925, John Wyndham tried to find himself in this world, so he had to learn more than one profession. But he eventually found himself writing fantastic articles for an American magazine. Like allwriters, Wyndham used a variety of pseudonyms. The writer's favorites were "John Benyon" and "John Benron Harris".

Recognition

During the war, John served as censor for the Ministry of Information. In the same period, the future writer enters the war zone as a signalman. After the end of the war, he learned that his brother had successfully published several books, and inspired John decided to drop his pseudonyms and keep his real name.

Shortly after that, John Wyndham released the fantasy novel The Day of the Triffids. The name of the author is becoming new in the world of literature, and readers are snapping up books with curiosity from the shelves.

The first success allowed the writer to publish a whole series of novels. John Wyndham, whose books gained incredible popularity, had his own unique style of writing, which stood out from other authors. He skillfully fixed the reader's attention not only on catastrophes, but also described in detail the characters' characters, the psychology of their behavior. John was so fascinated by this process that he settled on this direction and skillfully used it in all his fantasy novels.

Highlights

The favorite plot of the science fiction novels of the famous writer, as already mentioned, are global catastrophes. And the author's attention is focused exclusively on people trying to survive in difficult conditions. It was this that became the literary "framework" for the works that John Wyndham created. Books "Deviation fromNorms, The Kraken Awakens, Chrysalis, The Day of the Triffids, Midwich Cuckoo are the most popular and received special attention from literary critics.

John Wyndham is called a real classic of world fiction. He never goes into the description of external details, in his books the emphasis falls precisely on the events that happen to people, their reaction and adaptation. For example, in The Day of the Triffids, the author describes a situation where people on the planet have lost their sight and are trying to modernize modern society.

In Midwich Cuckoos, the characters are under an alien invasion, trying to survive. And in the book The Kraken Awakens, the author describes a global flood in which people are trying to adapt to new conditions. Particularly striking is the writer's fantasy in the novel Deviation from the Norm. The plot of the novel begins with a description of the planet after a nuclear war. There is chaos all around. A small colony of people, trying to survive, hides in the catacombs, collects the remnants of information about their ancestors. The war destroyed almost everything, and some people have undergone a mutation. To avoid deviations from the norm, mutants have to be killed or driven out of the colony. The protagonist is brought up in a family of religious fanatics. At night he has strange dreams about a beautiful city. He seems to be quite normal. But soon everything changes.

Thus, for John Wyndham, each work is not just a fascinating text with an abundance of characters and events, but a whole laboratory. In it, like the genius of fantastic science, he putsexperiments and observes the reaction of his test subjects - the heroes of the novel.

Reviews

Readers find the famous author's creations very light and exciting. The plots are fascinating, make you worry about the main characters and think about the behavior of humanity as a whole. After all, not everyone is ready to save their human soul in times of cruelty. The author's style is devoid of lyrical digressions. He writes sharply, logically and to the point.

In Wyndham's books it is impossible to hold attention to the details, he prefers to give out the big picture, voluminous and holistic, lifting the reader above the whole situation. A fantastic world of incredible adventures unfolds before your eyes, in which everything is controlled by John Wyndham. Books, reviews of which can only be found positive, are still in the top of popularity. It seems that not only fans of science fiction like them, but even the most biased reader finds the writer's work interesting.