Trouble with Lichen
by John Wyndham
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"Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two biochemists investigating a rare lichen, separately discover that it has a remarkable property: It slows the aging process almost to a halt. Francis, realizing the horrifying implications of an ever-youthful wealthy elite, decides to keep his findings a secret. But the younger and more daring Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo and free women from the career-versus-children binary--in short, a chance to remake the world"--Tags
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Member Reviews
I really liked this. The wide ranging points of view; the main character who speaks her mind rather than conform to society and wants to do something with her education other than marry; the in-depth considerations of what the discovery of a true anti-aging drug would mean to every aspect of society. Absolutely enthralling.
I mean and then she gets married anyway because authors just *cannot* imagine a happy ending that doesn't include finding True Love no matter how out of character they've established this to be, but fine, whatever, it's the end of the book anyway I guess, I'll just try and pretend that bit didn't happen.
I mean and then she gets married anyway because authors just *cannot* imagine a happy ending that doesn't include finding True Love no matter how out of character they've established this to be, but fine, whatever, it's the end of the book anyway I guess, I'll just try and pretend that bit didn't happen.
In this short novel from 1960, two scientists discover a species of lichen with the ability to drastically slow human aging.
There follows a lot of debate and speculation about what longer lifespans might or might not do to human society, which is kind of interesting even if I'm dubious about most of it, and even if it's ground that's been covered a lot in science fiction since. There's also some amusingly satirical humor in the reactions that various people and institutions have to the concept, as well as some apt skewering of the beauty industry.
But despite those positive points, the main thing I have to say about this novel is that it really, really hasn't aged well. (Uh, no pun intended.) The main character, you see, is a female show more scientist, and both she and the author take as a central theme the question of what longer lifespans might do to improve the lot of women. But, hoo boy, what may have seemed progressive in 1960 just feels painfully sexist now, in a way that makes it kind of hard to read. I mean, I really, really, really didn't need to read a solid thirty pages of opening material in which every I get to hear every single sexist thing ever said about women in STEM fields, up to and including a serious discussion of the merits of only hiring plain-looking women so they don't disrupt the menfolk with their temping sexy ways.
Yes, the main character gets to push back against these attitudes with a few mildly snarky lines, but that seems like pretty anemic stuff to me, and she turns out to have some rather sexist attitudes herself, and doesn't, in the end, remotely escape being something of a stereotype in her own right. Worse still, this supposed cause of improving the lot of women is pursued by performing life-changing medical procedures on women without their knowledge, understanding, or consent, and that's considered just hunky-dorky, in exactly the way that the then-common practice of not telling terminally ill women their diagnoses was. Which is, as it happens, something that's explicitly endorsed here.
All of which is very unpleasant in ways that, for me, really overshadowed the light, humorous stuff. Indeed, it's perhaps made more unpleasant by the light and humorous tone of the light and humorous stuff.
And because I know that a response like this to a book almost inevitably provokes someone, somewhere, into an irresistible impulse to mansplain about how novels are products of their times, I'll add that, yeah, I understand perfectly well that novels are products of their times. But sometimes that's exactly the problem. In a lot of highly relevant ways, this particular time sucked. I didn't have a fun time visiting it -- seriously, you sit through thirty pages of characters telling you people like you don't belong in your job, even if the author does make some vague gestures towards disagreeing with them, and see how you feel about it -- and it no longer works as social commentary because, thank goodness, society is very different now.
Honestly, it's interesting now mainly as a look at how oppressively women were treated in 1960, even by people who were trying to be on their side. But a lesson in the history of sexism isn't exactly what I was hoping for when I opened the front cover. show less
There follows a lot of debate and speculation about what longer lifespans might or might not do to human society, which is kind of interesting even if I'm dubious about most of it, and even if it's ground that's been covered a lot in science fiction since. There's also some amusingly satirical humor in the reactions that various people and institutions have to the concept, as well as some apt skewering of the beauty industry.
But despite those positive points, the main thing I have to say about this novel is that it really, really hasn't aged well. (Uh, no pun intended.) The main character, you see, is a female show more scientist, and both she and the author take as a central theme the question of what longer lifespans might do to improve the lot of women. But, hoo boy, what may have seemed progressive in 1960 just feels painfully sexist now, in a way that makes it kind of hard to read. I mean, I really, really, really didn't need to read a solid thirty pages of opening material in which every I get to hear every single sexist thing ever said about women in STEM fields, up to and including a serious discussion of the merits of only hiring plain-looking women so they don't disrupt the menfolk with their temping sexy ways.
Yes, the main character gets to push back against these attitudes with a few mildly snarky lines, but that seems like pretty anemic stuff to me, and she turns out to have some rather sexist attitudes herself, and doesn't, in the end, remotely escape being something of a stereotype in her own right. Worse still, this supposed cause of improving the lot of women is pursued by performing life-changing medical procedures on women without their knowledge, understanding, or consent, and that's considered just hunky-dorky, in exactly the way that the then-common practice of not telling terminally ill women their diagnoses was. Which is, as it happens, something that's explicitly endorsed here.
All of which is very unpleasant in ways that, for me, really overshadowed the light, humorous stuff. Indeed, it's perhaps made more unpleasant by the light and humorous tone of the light and humorous stuff.
And because I know that a response like this to a book almost inevitably provokes someone, somewhere, into an irresistible impulse to mansplain about how novels are products of their times, I'll add that, yeah, I understand perfectly well that novels are products of their times. But sometimes that's exactly the problem. In a lot of highly relevant ways, this particular time sucked. I didn't have a fun time visiting it -- seriously, you sit through thirty pages of characters telling you people like you don't belong in your job, even if the author does make some vague gestures towards disagreeing with them, and see how you feel about it -- and it no longer works as social commentary because, thank goodness, society is very different now.
Honestly, it's interesting now mainly as a look at how oppressively women were treated in 1960, even by people who were trying to be on their side. But a lesson in the history of sexism isn't exactly what I was hoping for when I opened the front cover. show less
Here I am, then, seven books into Penguin’s sexily reissued novels by John Wyndham. And yet, seven books in, he still surprises and delights me with his work. The rascal.
The first Wyndham novel I read, not-coincidentally seven years ago, was [b:The Day of the Triffids|3707792|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429098953s/3707792.jpg|188517]. That book may be better known than my most recent consumption Trouble with Lichen, but the two works do have some surprising parallels. Both have plants lurking ever-present in the background as the story’s ostensible focus, but make no qualms about the fact that no matter how big a deal the plants are, it’s we humans that really decide whether to make the show more world a better place for ourselves.
That’s not to say the two stories are simple copies of one another. In Triffids the eponymous plants are a man-eating threat, kept in check until a peculiar meteor shower renders most of humanity blind. Civilisation promptly collapses while the Triffids shuffle around chomping on a mostly defenceless population. It’s up to the luckily not-blinded protagonists to band together against the threat of the Triffids and the more nefarious groups of sighted survivors. Conversely, in Trouble with Lichen the plants are neither mobile nor threatening. Rather the titular lichen is found by a pair of scientists to have astonishing life-lengthening effects, stretching out a human lifespan to several hundred years. The real story here is how to deal with this discovery. Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to spark a cultural revolution? Destroy the samples and ignore it? All of the above? No, not all of the above. You can’t sell it and destroy it or the buyer will want a refund; and how’re you going to use it to revolt if you’ve sold and destroyed all the samples? Honestly, get a grip.
The Day of the Triffids is often called a “cosy catastrophe” novel since it describes society going up shit creek in a handbasket all while the stiff-upper-lipped heroes sit around discussing philosophy and drinking tea. Trouble with Lichen meanwhile isn’t particularly cosy nor catastrophic, it’s more of a social commentary on the way science is misunderstood by society and the evils of gender inequality. (Thank goodness those aren’t issues any more, fifty-six years since the book’s publication. Ahem.)
Despite all these differences, the two works really did strike me as sister novels. And, it turns out, the parallels between Triffids and Lichen are not a coincidence. Archivists at the University of Liverpool recently found two opening chapters, prepared by Wyndham in the early 1950s. They are, alas, just early glimpses of what could have been since Wyndham appears to have ditched both storylines in favour of the novels we eventually got. Still, it behoves me to reproduce them here for posterity. I’ll start with the opening words from the truly terrifying The Trouble with Triffids…
Not to be outdone, here’s the opening of what would have been Wyndham’s break-out novel had he not written Triffids instead.
The first Wyndham novel I read, not-coincidentally seven years ago, was [b:The Day of the Triffids|3707792|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429098953s/3707792.jpg|188517]. That book may be better known than my most recent consumption Trouble with Lichen, but the two works do have some surprising parallels. Both have plants lurking ever-present in the background as the story’s ostensible focus, but make no qualms about the fact that no matter how big a deal the plants are, it’s we humans that really decide whether to make the show more world a better place for ourselves.
That’s not to say the two stories are simple copies of one another. In Triffids the eponymous plants are a man-eating threat, kept in check until a peculiar meteor shower renders most of humanity blind. Civilisation promptly collapses while the Triffids shuffle around chomping on a mostly defenceless population. It’s up to the luckily not-blinded protagonists to band together against the threat of the Triffids and the more nefarious groups of sighted survivors. Conversely, in Trouble with Lichen the plants are neither mobile nor threatening. Rather the titular lichen is found by a pair of scientists to have astonishing life-lengthening effects, stretching out a human lifespan to several hundred years. The real story here is how to deal with this discovery. Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to spark a cultural revolution? Destroy the samples and ignore it? All of the above? No, not all of the above. You can’t sell it and destroy it or the buyer will want a refund; and how’re you going to use it to revolt if you’ve sold and destroyed all the samples? Honestly, get a grip.
The Day of the Triffids is often called a “cosy catastrophe” novel since it describes society going up shit creek in a handbasket all while the stiff-upper-lipped heroes sit around discussing philosophy and drinking tea. Trouble with Lichen meanwhile isn’t particularly cosy nor catastrophic, it’s more of a social commentary on the way science is misunderstood by society and the evils of gender inequality. (Thank goodness those aren’t issues any more, fifty-six years since the book’s publication. Ahem.)
Despite all these differences, the two works really did strike me as sister novels. And, it turns out, the parallels between Triffids and Lichen are not a coincidence. Archivists at the University of Liverpool recently found two opening chapters, prepared by Wyndham in the early 1950s. They are, alas, just early glimpses of what could have been since Wyndham appears to have ditched both storylines in favour of the novels we eventually got. Still, it behoves me to reproduce them here for posterity. I’ll start with the opening words from the truly terrifying The Trouble with Triffids…
The Trouble with Triffids, Chapter 1 [reproduced with the kind permission of Prof. T. Winklebottom, University of Liverpool].
Not even the most optimistic estate agent would call the building sturdy. Half the windows were missing and the door looked like it couldn’t quite decide whether to rest on its hinges or the floor. But there were four walls and a roof, and I damn sure couldn’t run any longer. Besides, it was just possible the pack following me would miss this place and I could stop running. At least for a while.
I thought back on the journey that had brought me here, and I shuddered. Three of us had fled the city under cover of darkness. We thought we’d been clever. We thought we were safe from those bloodthirsty things. We thought wrong. Only two of us made it into the woods. I honestly believed we’d be safe there, a belief I held on to right up until we were ambushed and my companion was torn to pieces beside me. Safe now in the dilapidated cabin I couldn’t suppress a shudder; I could still hear the terrible noises the creatures made as they feasted. No, wait. I really could hear them. They were at the door.
I could only keep still, hoping they would pass by, leave me be. But the hope was dashed almost as soon as it arrived as the door creaked open, revealing my pursuers. There were three of them, too many to fight off by myself. And yet they entered the building slowly, almost nervously. Their movements seemed to have a purpose to them. I could almost believe they were intelligent, driven by something other than base chemical reactions and a desire to feed. But no, that was absurd.
Once they realised I was alone they seemed to relax, hunger radiating from them. It was hard to tell, but I was fairly sure that two of them were female, and one a male. They looked young too. Of course, that meant nothing any more. Ever since they had realised that Triffid flesh halted their ageing process almost every adult human had been an enduring twenty-something. But not for much longer, now that so few of us remained. It was scant consolation, but I took it gladly as the three bore their teeth and approached.
Not to be outdone, here’s the opening of what would have been Wyndham’s break-out novel had he not written Triffids instead.
Day of the Lichen, Chapter 1 [ibid].show less
Will Stonecutter was one of the lucky ones. On the evening of May the eighth he was in hospital for ear surgery. He had lost one of his ears and the other had been damaged in an accident during his work as a lichenologist, a word that is totally real. The operation to treat his remaining ear was a total success, but the quantity of bandages used on his recovering lughole left him unable to hear anything short of nuclear armageddon. Or maybe not even that. Fortunately his eyes were unaffected so he was able to enjoy the unusually vibrant meteor shower taking place that night, although he fell into bed and asleep before the show reached its peak.
The next morning he awoke to find his room’s window shattered. He wondered what could have caused it, but this mystery was replaced by another when he noticed the clock and discovered it was nearly midday. He should have been awoken hours earlier, both for breakfast and to have his bandages removed, and yet his broken window suggested that no one had been in his room at all. Taking matters into his own hands, Will carefully unwrapped the bandages, and heaved a sigh of relief as the cool air reached the clammy skin of his ear, and sounds returned to him. But what unusual sounds they were.
His violently open window allowed all the sounds of the city outside to come to him, and it sounded like bedlam. Car alarms blared, sirens wailed, and while he couldn’t discern individual voices there sounded like a lot of shouting going on. Will frowned at this. All this shouting and noise didn’t seem very British to him.
At that moment a new sound joined the cacophony - Big Ben announcing midday. Will was due to be discharged during the morning, so he felt perfectly within his rights to change into his waiting clothes and see himself out. He intended to have some aggressively polite words with whatever nurse was on duty so as to make felt his displeasure at not being seen, but his plans hit a snag when he made it to the front door of the hospital without seeing a single member of staff.
Outside the hospital was a gentle orgy of civil carnage, scenes to make any self-respecting Englishman really rather discomposed. The shouting Will had heard from his room turned out to originate from people on the street simply conversing, albeit louder than seemed necessary and standing closer than could be called decent. The numerous car alarms seemed to be caused by people bumping into parked cars hard enough to trigger the alarm, but Will was horrified to note that these people were then walking on without apologising profusely to the inanimate object. It didn’t take long for Will to realise the shocking truth: London had been rendered almost entirely deaf. From various shouted conversations he discerned that the meteor shower of the previous evening had been so loud as to, at least temporarily, deafen the entire populace.
Odder than even this aural malady was the green lichen that seemed to have sprouted up overnight all over the city. Most people seemed to be giving the lichen a wide berth, which Will considered a wise idea. The lichen infesting the city he recognised from his studies as munchius onpeopleius, a rare variety normally confined to laboratories that was technically carnivorous, although animals had to literally fall on top of it in order to be digested. A fate, he saw, that was about to befall a hapless young lady who was not looking where she was going and was about to walk right into a patch of the predacious plant. (Although, as a lichenologist, Will was well aware that lichen is not a plant but a symbiotic organism consisting of algae and fungi.)
“I say, watch out,” called Will to the lady. But she didn’t hear him, what with the deafness and everything. He considered grabbing her by the shoulder, but that so deeply offended his sense of propriety that he decided it was better to let her be slowly consumed by lichen over the course of the next few hours. Happy that the lady’s honour had been maintained, Will headed off into London wondering if in this land of the deaf, the one eared man could be king.
Here I am, then, seven books into Penguin’s sexily reissued novels by John Wyndham. And yet, seven books in, he still surprises and delights me with his work. The rascal.
The first Wyndham novel I read, not-coincidentally seven years ago, was [b:The Day of the Triffids|3707792|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429098953s/3707792.jpg|188517]. That book may be better known than my most recent consumption Trouble with Lichen, but the two works do have some surprising parallels. Both have plants lurking ever-present in the background as the story’s ostensible focus, but make no qualms about the fact that no matter how big a deal the plants are, it’s we humans that really decide whether to make the show more world a better place for ourselves.
That’s not to say the two stories are simple copies of one another. In Triffids the eponymous plants are a man-eating threat, kept in check until a peculiar meteor shower renders most of humanity blind. Civilisation promptly collapses while the Triffids shuffle around chomping on a mostly defenceless population. It’s up to the luckily not-blinded protagonists to band together against the threat of the Triffids and the more nefarious groups of sighted survivors. Conversely, in Trouble with Lichen the plants are neither mobile nor threatening. Rather the titular lichen is found by a pair of scientists to have astonishing life-lengthening effects, stretching out a human lifespan to several hundred years. The real story here is how to deal with this discovery. Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to spark a cultural revolution? Destroy the samples and ignore it? All of the above? No, not all of the above. You can’t sell it and destroy it or the buyer will want a refund; and how’re you going to use it to revolt if you’ve sold and destroyed all the samples? Honestly, get a grip.
The Day of the Triffids is often called a “cosy catastrophe” novel since it describes society going up shit creek in a handbasket all while the stiff-upper-lipped heroes sit around discussing philosophy and drinking tea. Trouble with Lichen meanwhile isn’t particularly cosy nor catastrophic, it’s more of a social commentary on the way science is misunderstood by society and the evils of gender inequality. (Thank goodness those aren’t issues any more, fifty-six years since the book’s publication. Ahem.)
Despite all these differences, the two works really did strike me as sister novels. And, it turns out, the parallels between Triffids and Lichen are not a coincidence. Archivists at the University of Liverpool recently found two opening chapters, prepared by Wyndham in the early 1950s. They are, alas, just early glimpses of what could have been since Wyndham appears to have ditched both storylines in favour of the novels we eventually got. Still, it behoves me to reproduce them here for posterity. I’ll start with the opening words from the truly terrifying The Trouble with Triffids…
Not to be outdone, here’s the opening of what would have been Wyndham’s break-out novel had he not written Triffids instead.
The first Wyndham novel I read, not-coincidentally seven years ago, was [b:The Day of the Triffids|3707792|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429098953s/3707792.jpg|188517]. That book may be better known than my most recent consumption Trouble with Lichen, but the two works do have some surprising parallels. Both have plants lurking ever-present in the background as the story’s ostensible focus, but make no qualms about the fact that no matter how big a deal the plants are, it’s we humans that really decide whether to make the show more world a better place for ourselves.
That’s not to say the two stories are simple copies of one another. In Triffids the eponymous plants are a man-eating threat, kept in check until a peculiar meteor shower renders most of humanity blind. Civilisation promptly collapses while the Triffids shuffle around chomping on a mostly defenceless population. It’s up to the luckily not-blinded protagonists to band together against the threat of the Triffids and the more nefarious groups of sighted survivors. Conversely, in Trouble with Lichen the plants are neither mobile nor threatening. Rather the titular lichen is found by a pair of scientists to have astonishing life-lengthening effects, stretching out a human lifespan to several hundred years. The real story here is how to deal with this discovery. Sell it to the highest bidder? Use it to spark a cultural revolution? Destroy the samples and ignore it? All of the above? No, not all of the above. You can’t sell it and destroy it or the buyer will want a refund; and how’re you going to use it to revolt if you’ve sold and destroyed all the samples? Honestly, get a grip.
The Day of the Triffids is often called a “cosy catastrophe” novel since it describes society going up shit creek in a handbasket all while the stiff-upper-lipped heroes sit around discussing philosophy and drinking tea. Trouble with Lichen meanwhile isn’t particularly cosy nor catastrophic, it’s more of a social commentary on the way science is misunderstood by society and the evils of gender inequality. (Thank goodness those aren’t issues any more, fifty-six years since the book’s publication. Ahem.)
Despite all these differences, the two works really did strike me as sister novels. And, it turns out, the parallels between Triffids and Lichen are not a coincidence. Archivists at the University of Liverpool recently found two opening chapters, prepared by Wyndham in the early 1950s. They are, alas, just early glimpses of what could have been since Wyndham appears to have ditched both storylines in favour of the novels we eventually got. Still, it behoves me to reproduce them here for posterity. I’ll start with the opening words from the truly terrifying The Trouble with Triffids…
The Trouble with Triffids, Chapter 1 [reproduced with the kind permission of Prof. T. Winklebottom, University of Liverpool].
Not even the most optimistic estate agent would call the building sturdy. Half the windows were missing and the door looked like it couldn’t quite decide whether to rest on its hinges or the floor. But there were four walls and a roof, and I damn sure couldn’t run any longer. Besides, it was just possible the pack following me would miss this place and I could stop running. At least for a while.
I thought back on the journey that had brought me here, and I shuddered. Three of us had fled the city under cover of darkness. We thought we’d been clever. We thought we were safe from those bloodthirsty things. We thought wrong. Only two of us made it into the woods. I honestly believed we’d be safe there, a belief I held on to right up until we were ambushed and my companion was torn to pieces beside me. Safe now in the dilapidated cabin I couldn’t suppress a shudder; I could still hear the terrible noises the creatures made as they feasted. No, wait. I really could hear them. They were at the door.
I could only keep still, hoping they would pass by, leave me be. But the hope was dashed almost as soon as it arrived as the door creaked open, revealing my pursuers. There were three of them, too many to fight off by myself. And yet they entered the building slowly, almost nervously. Their movements seemed to have a purpose to them. I could almost believe they were intelligent, driven by something other than base chemical reactions and a desire to feed. But no, that was absurd.
Once they realised I was alone they seemed to relax, hunger radiating from them. It was hard to tell, but I was fairly sure that two of them were female, and one a male. They looked young too. Of course, that meant nothing any more. Ever since they had realised that Triffid flesh halted their ageing process almost every adult human had been an enduring twenty-something. But not for much longer, now that so few of us remained. It was scant consolation, but I took it gladly as the three bore their teeth and approached.
Not to be outdone, here’s the opening of what would have been Wyndham’s break-out novel had he not written Triffids instead.
Day of the Lichen, Chapter 1 [ibid].show less
Will Stonecutter was one of the lucky ones. On the evening of May the eighth he was in hospital for ear surgery. He had lost one of his ears and the other had been damaged in an accident during his work as a lichenologist, a word that is totally real. The operation to treat his remaining ear was a total success, but the quantity of bandages used on his recovering lughole left him unable to hear anything short of nuclear armageddon. Or maybe not even that. Fortunately his eyes were unaffected so he was able to enjoy the unusually vibrant meteor shower taking place that night, although he fell into bed and asleep before the show reached its peak.
The next morning he awoke to find his room’s window shattered. He wondered what could have caused it, but this mystery was replaced by another when he noticed the clock and discovered it was nearly midday. He should have been awoken hours earlier, both for breakfast and to have his bandages removed, and yet his broken window suggested that no one had been in his room at all. Taking matters into his own hands, Will carefully unwrapped the bandages, and heaved a sigh of relief as the cool air reached the clammy skin of his ear, and sounds returned to him. But what unusual sounds they were.
His violently open window allowed all the sounds of the city outside to come to him, and it sounded like bedlam. Car alarms blared, sirens wailed, and while he couldn’t discern individual voices there sounded like a lot of shouting going on. Will frowned at this. All this shouting and noise didn’t seem very British to him.
At that moment a new sound joined the cacophony - Big Ben announcing midday. Will was due to be discharged during the morning, so he felt perfectly within his rights to change into his waiting clothes and see himself out. He intended to have some aggressively polite words with whatever nurse was on duty so as to make felt his displeasure at not being seen, but his plans hit a snag when he made it to the front door of the hospital without seeing a single member of staff.
Outside the hospital was a gentle orgy of civil carnage, scenes to make any self-respecting Englishman really rather discomposed. The shouting Will had heard from his room turned out to originate from people on the street simply conversing, albeit louder than seemed necessary and standing closer than could be called decent. The numerous car alarms seemed to be caused by people bumping into parked cars hard enough to trigger the alarm, but Will was horrified to note that these people were then walking on without apologising profusely to the inanimate object. It didn’t take long for Will to realise the shocking truth: London had been rendered almost entirely deaf. From various shouted conversations he discerned that the meteor shower of the previous evening had been so loud as to, at least temporarily, deafen the entire populace.
Odder than even this aural malady was the green lichen that seemed to have sprouted up overnight all over the city. Most people seemed to be giving the lichen a wide berth, which Will considered a wise idea. The lichen infesting the city he recognised from his studies as munchius onpeopleius, a rare variety normally confined to laboratories that was technically carnivorous, although animals had to literally fall on top of it in order to be digested. A fate, he saw, that was about to befall a hapless young lady who was not looking where she was going and was about to walk right into a patch of the predacious plant. (Although, as a lichenologist, Will was well aware that lichen is not a plant but a symbiotic organism consisting of algae and fungi.)
“I say, watch out,” called Will to the lady. But she didn’t hear him, what with the deafness and everything. He considered grabbing her by the shoulder, but that so deeply offended his sense of propriety that he decided it was better to let her be slowly consumed by lichen over the course of the next few hours. Happy that the lady’s honour had been maintained, Will headed off into London wondering if in this land of the deaf, the one eared man could be king.
To be anthropological about it: the present primary social role of western woman is as wife; her secondary status is as mother; in upper and middle classes her tertiary status is sometimes that of companion – in other classes companionship can come a long way down the list, and in most nonwestern nations it scarcely rates at all.
Written in 1960, this book aboutthe discovery of a method to extend life by 3 or 5 times is full of interesting ideas, for example that living for two or three hundred years would allow many more women to have fulfilling careers instead of being housewives, but would be extremely unpopular with the trade unions whose members would have to work for decades longer . Unfortunately, the plot is not as strong as show more the ideas and the main characters are both two-dimensional and not very likeable, so this is my least favourite of John Wyndham's novels. show less
Written in 1960, this book about
I read several Wyndham novels when I was 12 or 13 - this was one of them. My recollection of those novels was that they were enjoyable but tended to have poor endings, as if Wyndham had said what he wanted, got bored and just stopped. The exception was The Day of the Triffids which had a satisfactory ending. So how would I respond to re-reading Trouble with Lichen?
First I found it a good deal more sophisticated than memory had led me to believe: The book is a feminist tract, following the career of a strong, intelligent, visionary biochemist who uses the discovery of a lichen with anti-aging properties to start a revolution in the prospects for women not seen since the movement for universal suffrage.
Second I found it technically show more distinctive: The narrative is fast-paced and driven largely by dialogue and fabricated quotations from newspapers and BBC broadcasts. Characters (often un-named) are left to discuss the evolving events as representatives of an entire social class or profession or sex, reminding me of the general passages in The Grapes of Wrath (such as the salesman who can't get enough jalopies to shift on to migrating Oakies). Telephone conversations between characters replace descriptions of action. That said, Wyndham does describe some of the most dramatic action directly.
Thirdly, the ending, though abrupt, was fairly satisfactory, after all: Many SF writers would be more interested in describing the social consequences of a drug that can extend the expectation of life tremndously but that is not Wyndham is after - he wants to suggest that women are not merely ornaments or baby factories and the beginning of a social revolution gives him plenty of space to do so. He did indeed say what he wanted, then stop, but the resolution is fitting and pleasing. show less
First I found it a good deal more sophisticated than memory had led me to believe: The book is a feminist tract, following the career of a strong, intelligent, visionary biochemist who uses the discovery of a lichen with anti-aging properties to start a revolution in the prospects for women not seen since the movement for universal suffrage.
Second I found it technically show more distinctive: The narrative is fast-paced and driven largely by dialogue and fabricated quotations from newspapers and BBC broadcasts. Characters (often un-named) are left to discuss the evolving events as representatives of an entire social class or profession or sex, reminding me of the general passages in The Grapes of Wrath (such as the salesman who can't get enough jalopies to shift on to migrating Oakies). Telephone conversations between characters replace descriptions of action. That said, Wyndham does describe some of the most dramatic action directly.
Thirdly, the ending, though abrupt, was fairly satisfactory, after all: Many SF writers would be more interested in describing the social consequences of a drug that can extend the expectation of life tremndously but that is not Wyndham is after - he wants to suggest that women are not merely ornaments or baby factories and the beginning of a social revolution gives him plenty of space to do so. He did indeed say what he wanted, then stop, but the resolution is fitting and pleasing. show less
John Wyndham has written some of my favourite books - Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids. So I have decided to catch up on some of his work that I have never read. So Lichen is interesting but very much of its time (early 60s). Some parts are winceable - particularly the class snobbery and the women must be young and beautiful forever (vomit). But it does have some interesting questions on what a longevity drug would mean. As the developed world actually faces a time when just a small increase in life spans is causing problems, it's the things that Wyndham misses that stand out in this novel. Glad I read it but it is not joining my Wyndham favourites list.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- L'Herbe à vivre
- Original publication date
- 1960
- People/Characters
- Diana Brackley; Francis Saxover; Zephanie Saxover; Paul Saxover; Jane Saxover; Richard Treverne
- Important places
- London, England, UK
- First words
- The farewell was beautiful.
- Quotations
- The present primary social role of western women is as wife: her secondary status is as mother; in upper and middle classes her tertiary status is sometimes that of companion.
'My great-aunt fought, and went to prison several times, for women's rights; and what did she achieve? A change of technique from coercion to diddle, and a generation of granddaughters who don't even know they're being diddle... (show all)d - and probably wouldn't care more if they did. Our deadliest susceptibility is conformity, and our deadliest virtue is putting up with things as they are. So watch for the diddles, darling. You can't be too careful about them in a world where the symbol of the joy of living can be a baked bean.' - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Come along, darling, I'll show you ...
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 823.08762
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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