Stephen King’s Cell and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids are both post-apocalyptical novels that describe an apocalyptic event and how humanity tries to rebuild itself afterwards. The first recognised work of modern apocalyptic fiction is said to be Mary Shelley’s The Last Man which details the account of the last man living in a world in which humanity has been wiped out by a plague. Whilst it received harsh criticisms and reviews at the time, The Last Man has led the way for novels like H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds to become successful. The two novels are both set in the time of their writing: The Day of the Triffids being set in the 1950s and Cell being set in the 21st Century. Therefore the apocalyptic events described by Wyndham and King are relevant to their times: Cell is about a virus that infests humanity via their mobile phones and The Day of the Triffids is about the population being attacked by alien plants after the majority of the human race is blinded. If a reader were to perceive these apocalyptic events as being ‘unrealistic’ then this would only be because that they feel they are anachronistic and therefore the reader does not fully engage with the novels. The reader’s interpretation, the novels’ contexts of reception, as well as their contexts of production are vitally important when judging whether or not the events described by Wyndham and King are ‘unrealistic’.Brian Aldiss, in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, commented on The Day of the Triffids by saying that:The Day of the Triffids was totally devoid of ideas but read smoothly, and thus reached a maximum audience, which enjoyed cosy disasters or rather a ‘cosy catastrophe’.The term ‘cosy catastrophe’ is a term given to …
…s didn’t manage to achieve in the same way that King has in Cell.In conclusion, when determining whether or not the events described in Cell and The Day of the Triffids are unrealistic, one has to take into account the varying attitudes of readers: some may see them as being completely implausible whereas others may find them to be a possibility. One has to look at the events themselves, the portrayal of the characters, as well as the contexts of the novels’ production in order to determine how Wyndham and King intended for their described events to be received.Works Cited
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Cell : Stephen King (Hodder, 2007)The Day of the Triffids : John Wyndham (Penguin Books, 1981)Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction : Brian Aldiss (House of Stratus, 2001)”Wyndham, John” : John Clute in The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction : Peter Nicholds (ed.) (1979)
