The Night of the Triffids is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel by Simon Clark

Simon Clark

Simon Clark is a horror novel writer from Doncaster, England. One of his most notable works is the novel The Night of the Triffids.Clark has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and British Fantasy Award...

 published in 2001. It is a sequel

Sequel

A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...

 to John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids

The Day of the Triffids

The Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic novel published in 1951 by the English science fiction author John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, under the pen-name John Wyndham. Although Wyndham had already published other novels using other pen-name combinations drawn from his lengthy real...

. Clark has been commended for his success at mimicking Wyndham's style, but most reviewers have not rated his creation as highly as the original 1951 work. Clark's book is written in the first person

First-person narrative

First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

 and narrated by David Masen, the son of Wyndham's protagonist.

Plot summary

The story starts 25 years after The Day of the Triffids ended. Pilot David Masen has grown up in a community on the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

, safe from the venomous and carnivorous triffid plants which have dominated the world since most human beings were blinded by a meteor shower

Meteor shower

A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller...

 (as related in the original book).

As the sequel begins, a mysterious darkness falls — something is blotting out the sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

. Masen takes to the air to determine if a high cloud is to blame but he loses contact with his home base and crash-lands on a floating island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

 populated by triffids. There, he meets an orphaned young girl, and the pair is subsequently rescued by an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 ship and taken to Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 island in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Manhattan, a secure and self contained community like the one on the Isle of Wight, appears at first glance to be a utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

; but David soon realises that it is in fact a dictatorship

Dictatorship

A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...

run by an old enemy of his father's. David and his young friend are soon being used by both the dictator and a band of rebels who oppose the dictator's tyrannical rule, while the triffids — now evolved into even more dangerous forms — are trying to take deadly advantage of the slowly lifting darkness.

Literary significance & criticism

Comments on The Night of the Triffids include:

"Clark scores fairly high in pastiching Wyndham's style, at least."

"Wyndham did hit notes of poetry and grim beauty more often than Clark does"

"Overall, The Night of the Triffids is a fine work of fiction that will keep any sci-fi/horror fan happy"

"It fails, however, in its main aim, that of supplying a worthy follow-up to one of the classics of British science fiction."