While Wyndham's books regularly go out of print, millions know him from the film adaptations of his novels "The Midwich Cuckoos" (the basis for "Village Of The Damned", filmed twice) and "The Day Of The Triffids" (done as both a feature film and a BBC mini-series)......
Like TV and film writer Nigel Kneale (whose biography we covered a week or so ago) Wyndham excelled at coming up with stunning new apocalyptic threats to planet Earth.......(and like Kneale, he tended to zero in on the breakdowns of British society, government and scientific communities in dealing these attacks.....whether from alien-spawned, mentally powerful children or ambulatory plants with a taste for human flesh.....)
"The Kraken Wakes", alternately titled "Out Of The Deeps", is a Wyndham variation on H.G.Wells' "The War Of The Worlds" that resonates even more today........his invading aliens, unseen beings who must exist in high-pressurized environments, plummet to earth in fireballs and take up residence in the deepest trenches of our oceans.
It takes a while for disbelieving world leaders to comprehend that the 'Bathies" as Wyndham names them, have declared war and claimed the seas as their own, sinking all worldwide shipping with an underwater death ray. (The one lone scientist who's figured it out suffers ridicule and ostracizing from a world of invasion-deniers.......poor guy's like Al Gore explaining global warming to a room full of Trumpanzees)
Everyone finally realizes they're in some serious trouble when those deep-in-the-deeps alien war Marshalls (jokingly referred to as "the Low Command") launch amphibious raids on coastal towns and cities.......
These horrific raids, as created by Wyndham, take up the middle section of the novel and they're the stuff of nightmares.......the aliens roll up the beaches in impenetrable egg-shaped 'sea tanks' and spew out super-glue tentacles that they use to capture and drag off screaming, agonized masses of humans back into the sea. Essentially, they're shrimping and crabbing.......and we're the Catch Of The Day......
But even as we successfully beat back their raids, the Bathies, undeterred, respond by converting the planet into a more hospitable home for them........melting the Polar Ice Caps to completely flood the earth.
As in all Wyndham books, his protagonists confront these fantastic catastrophes with British reserve, understated humor and stiff upper lips. (Some may find his style overly pedantic and slow, but personally, we took it in as part of the unique charm of his storytelling.....)
For anyone who hasn't encountered this book, we'll not reveal how this struggle for survival between land-earthlings and sea-aliens finishes up. Give it a read to find out........we do, about every couple of years. Which should tell you right away that this fave or ours earns an immediate 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS. All sci-fi fans will want to dive into these 'deeps'.
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