The Day of the Triffids

One night, Earth was lit by green falling stars— the planet passed through a cloud of strange comet fragments (or maybe something secret military-space exploded in orbit?). Almost everyone went out to watch the wonderful spectacle, and in the morning they all woke up blind. The sighted were so few that they could only watch the quick death of cities and flee from them wherever their eyes looked.

The tragedy was made worse by a second disaster: the walking plants—triffids—bred by someone about twenty years earlier and valued as a source of oils. The fact that they had a poisonous sting and a weak imitation of mind didn’t worry people until the world catastrophe. But, as one character in the book said: “Take away our sight, and our superiority will disappear.”

As a result, the green stars destroyed the existing civilization, and the triffids almost led to the total disappearance of Homo sapiens from the face of Earth. A few years later, only rare farm communities that managed to survive were besieged by triffid hordes—creatures that weren’t afraid of bullets or mortars, and only a jet of flame could drive these “plant predators” away for a moment. And on top of that, there were plenty of other social problems: how to live next, whether to go the technological or the feudal path, what moral priorities should be in a changed world, and so on…

It was the catastrophe that both brought together and separated two people who had accidentally kept their sight—William Masen and Jozella Playton—giving them a chance to love and then tearing them apart again. Will they manage to meet once more?