Showing results by author "John Wyndham" in All Categories

David Strorm's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. Little does he realise that his own son, his niece Rosalind and their friends have their own secret aberration which would label them as mutants. But as David and Rosalind grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal their differences from the village elders. Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badland.

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere 24 hours before is gone forever. But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world.

In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed - except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant. The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast, and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside....

Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution. As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth.

Newly widowed Phyllida returns from India to visit her absent-minded father, Professor Woodbridge, only to find the house locked up and deserted. Phyllida learns that he left town four months ago having dismissed the staff, telling them he was leaving for a prolonged holiday. After some further investigation, it appears that her father has vanished. As Phyllida investigates the disappearance of her missing father, she is faced with secrets and revelations she could never have been prepared for.

Journalist Mike Watson and his wife, Phyllis, trace it back to the strange showering lights they noticed on the final day of their honeymoon cruise; lights which appeared to land and disappear into the water. Reports mount of similar sightings all over the world. Governments embark on missions to investigate the sea, but ships disappear and diving crews never return to the surface. Something deep in the ocean does not want to be disturbed.

Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself. And, like many parents, they waited for him to get over it, but it started to get worse. Mathew's conversations with himself grew more and more intense—it was like listening to one end of a telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with another person you couldn't hear. Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky—the person who lived in his head.

A millionaire English lord dreams of founding a Utopian community on a remote Pacific island. Among the 40-odd men and women selected for the project are a pestologist named Camilla and the narrator. Within hours of the group's arrival on the sunny isle, their radio has been destroyed. Within days, several members of the group are dead. Dream turns to nightmare as they discover the island is overrun by a species programmed to resist and dominate any invader.

Bill Masen wakes up one morning in his hospital bed. His eyes are completely bandaged after an eye operation so he is unable to see. He immediately notices how still and quiet everything is. Having taken off his bandages, he discovers that both inside the hospital and out, the majority of the population (who watched a display of startlingly bright comets in the night sky the previous evening) have all gone blind, and realises that there is a terrifying new enemy for humankind to contend with.

Ships are sinking for no apparent reason, carrying hundreds to a dark underwater grave. Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe. 

Matthew is a normal 11-year-old boy living with his parents and little sister in Surrey. He's too old and sensible to have an imaginary friend really. Yet when Matthew's parents keep finding him talking and arguing with a strange presence whom Matthew calls Chocky, that's what they believe it must be…at first. But Chocky is oddly sinister, and keeps asking Matthew all sorts of complicated questions about the world and making him behave in unusual and erratic ways. Then Matthew suddenly does something heroic, well beyond his capabilities; the media become interested and the interest in Matthew widens.

Full-cast dramatisations of six masterpieces from the founding fathers of dystopian fiction. Dark and disturbing, provocative and prescient, dystopian literature has long captured our imagination with its nightmarish visions of forbidding future worlds. Included here are six classic novels of time-travel, totalitarianism and terror, written by some of the masters of speculative fiction and adapted for radio with all-star casts.

Bill Nighy, Barbara Shelley and Peter Sallis are among the cast in six classic BBC Radio dramatisations of stories by one of Britain's most popular science fiction authors. 'The Day of the Triffids', first broadcast in 1968, is set in a world in which most people have been left blind after a meteor shower, and lethal carnivorous triffids are roaming the land. 'The Kraken Wakes', dramatised for radio in 1998, is a gripping story of monsters from the deep, alien invasion and ecological disaster.

The author spent several years as an assistant district officer among the Yorubas in Nigeria, and was thus enabled to collect the folklore contained in this book from native sources. The reticence of the natives on religious subjects made it necessary to piece much together from incantations and chance remarks, but it is hoped that the notes will show that no great liberty has been taken with the beliefs of a tribe which inhabits a large area in West Africa.

This full-cast drama, part of BBC Audiobooks' Classic Radio Sci-Fi series, is based on the classic post-war 'science fantasy' novel which made John Wyndham famous, and whose appeal endures to this day. Giles Cooper's six-part adaptation stars Gary Watson, Barbara Shelley and Peter Sallis, with appearances from Doctor Who names Peter Pratt, Christopher Bidmead and David Brierley. Divided by blindness and societal breakdown, humanity is at the mercy of the carniverous Triffids....

At first, the fireballs seemed to be nothing more than a dazzling display of lights in the sky, plunging into the deepest oceans and disappearing without trace. But when ships started sinking inexplicably and the sea-lanes became impassable, it seemed that the world was facing a threat of unprecedented proportions.

When young Matthew starts talking to himself, and introduces his invisible friend, Chocky, to the family, his parents decide it's just a phase he is going through. But when Matthew starts explaining binary maths and anti-gravity propulsion, they begin to worry. Is Chocky really just the product of an over-inactive imagination, or something more?