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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 55 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Wyndham, John
Green. The 'green flashes' cause everyone who sees them to go blind.
Bill Masen . Bill Masen is, in my opinion, a wonderful character. His reactions are so perfectly rational that it makes the book so much more alive to the reader - which is actually quite frightening.
Sex is My Adventure. She is currently writing 'Here the Forsaken' when the book starts, she later refers to herself as the 'author' of her son David, but 'Sex is my Adventure' is her famous novel, which she cannot shake the influence of, in society, not even in the aftermath of a worldwide catastrophe.
Clerkenwell. Bill and Josella collect lots of equipment to combat the triffids, which no-one else sees as being a threat.
Coker. The Colonel and Micheal Beadley are members of the group whom Bill and josella meet at the tower; Miss Durrant splits from the main group to form a more 'utopian' society and Coker turns out to be less of a problem later on.
Typhoid. One theory brought up later in the book is that the plague may have been a form of biological warfare, brought down with the green flashes.
Tynsham. Miss Durrant leads Bill and Coker astray to prevent them from joining up with the other, less moral, group.
The Americans. The girl, whose name is not mentioned, believes that nothing could have happened to the Americans and is sure that they will be along soon to sort it all out.
Susan. Susan is found by Bill whilst he is looking for Josella. He buries her brother, who was killed by a triffid. It is the only grave he ever digs.
The Isle of Wight. The fact that it is surrounded by water gives it natural protection from triffids, perfect for the few remaining people of England...
The Pink Nursery Book. Mike rejects Phyllis' choice as too long and out of key. Google cannot find the supposed author (Emily Pettifell) or 'The Pink Nursery Book', so I presume John Wyndham made them up, along with the lines quoted by Phyllis as apposite
'- But Mother, please tell me, what can those things be
That crawl up so stealthily out of the sea'.
If you know any differently, please let me know!
English Broadcasting Company. This was written by John Wyndham in the days when the BBC was the only broadcasting medium in Britain.
| Mike and Phyllis were on their honeymoon when they saw the fireballs that were the arrival of the invaders. What ship were they on? | John Wyndham: 'The Kraken Wakes'
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The Guinevere. The fireballs were the first indication that some thing strange was beginning to happen. All the wrong answers were ships sunk by the invaders in the book. Phyllis was particularly upset by the loss of 'The Queen Anne', as they had seen this apparently beautiful ship in Southampton.
Escondida. Escondida was an island in the Caribbean where the Watsons had gone with Bocker, who had compiled a probability list of where the next attack would come. Although Grand Cayman was attacked before Escondida, the 'sea-tanks' did come ashore at Smithtown, Escondida. The 'sea-tanks' did not attack England until much later. I made up Salvatina.
Leslie Bray and Muriel Flynn. The 'sea-tanks' extrude bubbles, which split open, deploying long, sticky cilia that drag anything animate in (Phyllis later describes it as 'shrimping'). Muriel was a technical assistant and Leslie a recordist and were both unlucky enough to be caught. Leslie was apparently killed by a broken neck in the fall when the cilia got him, but Muriel was crying in terror. Mike's nightmares replace Muriel with Phyllis.
An outside toilet. Phyllis, who is more long-sighted than Mike, bought a lot of food and, having taught herself bricklaying, stored it both in her new 'arbour' and also bricked up half the cellar. She did not tell Mike what she had done, as she was worried he might take high moral tone about black-market food. She told Mike the arbour was for working in on a warm day. Mike thinks she's built an outside toilet (privy)!
Rose Cottage. It is a grey-stone, five-roomed cottage bought with a legacy from Phyllis's Aunt Helen and is approximately 279 miles from London. There are no roses at Rose Cottage and Mike explains that in Cornwall 'rose' does not mean rose, but heath. If any Cornish speakers can confirm or deny this, I would be very interested. Rose Cottage is apparently the second most popular house name in the UK, beaten only by 'The Cottage'.
Harrogate, North Yorkshire. The government moved out of Westminster (which is right on the Thames) to the charming spa town of Harrogate.
The Midge. They find the drifting boat with a dead woman and use it to get to their cottage in Cornwall. London is deserted and it sounds as if civil war had broken out in Harrogate.
| At the end of the book, apparently only a fifth, an eighth or less of the population of the UK was left. What had killed most people? | John Wyndham: 'The Kraken Wakes'
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Pneumonia. 'Not much food...no resistance, no medical services, no drugs and three hellish winters'. John Wyndham mentions that this was approximately the population at the time of the first Elizabethans - but the UK counted then, so the book ends on an optimistic note. I hope you enjoyed the quiz.
| "Chocky" is a book about an 11-year-old boy who starts to behave oddly...what was the first thing his adopted father noticed? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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Matthew talking to himself. His (adopted) father, David, hears Matthew conducting an argument against an inaudible protagonist, who appears to be advocating a 32-hour day, an 8-day week (so it can be divided into halves and quarters) and a 32-day month. This one-sided conversation piques David's curiosity so much that he looks out of the garden shed to see who Matthew's talking to. But there's no one there!
| David and his wife Mary (Matthew's adopted parents) also have a natural daughter, Polly. When Chocky became evident, at first David and Mary thought that Matthew had an imaginary friend, because the younger Polly had once had one (for the best part of a year!) What was Polly's imaginary friend's name? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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Piff. Piff must have been a royal pain! She appeared on chairs as one was about to sit down, needed glasses of water in the middle of the night, wanted taking to the lavatory during church sermons, needed extra chairs in cafes (where she often felt sick) and was often left until the last minute on journeys' departures. She was forgotten when Polly met some real friends on holiday. David was quite "sorry for the deserted Piff, apparently doomed to wander for ever in summer's traces upon the forlorn beaches of Sussex" but was delighted to see the back of her, nonetheless! My mother claimed that I once had an imaginary friend called Petunia, but I argued that this was the vilest calumny.
Matthew had a high temperature and begged his mother to make Chocky leave him alone. Matthew, having picked up some sort of 'flu bug at school, was delirious and didn't seem to know "whether he was talking to his mother, his father, or to some mysterious character he called Chocky". Mary used the technique that she had used with Piff and addressed a point above Matthew's head and told Chocky to go away and leave him alone. This worked.
That Matthew didn't seem to know if Chocky was a him or a her. David also thought (and I would guess, correctly) that while it's not unusual for little girls to have an 'imaginary friend', it was a bit odd for an 11-year-old boy. He was certain that there would be a word for some suitably gynandrous Greek. Mary started to worry and wondered whether they should take Matthew to a psychiatrist.
| David and Matthew thought of several reasons why Chocky was a female. What was not one of them? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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They felt it would help them to gang up on her. The 'ganging up on her if she was a girl' theory came from Mary, but David thought this was nonsensical. Matthew explained that Chocky didn't seem to know whether they were a boy or a girl and had said "that it sounded a pretty silly arrangement".
No. She was jealous. Although Matthew (who was two at the time) had burst into tears at the thought of a baby sister (he had really wanted a baby lamb!), they had grown very close and she felt displaced by his new confidante, Chocky. She started picking at Matthew and arguing with him. Polly didn't believe in Chocky either, except as a kind of Piff. Once again Mary suggested getting some professional advice about Matthew.
| Mr Trimble, Matthew's teacher, came around to explain that Matthew was trying to work in two systems and it seemed to be confusing him, as he was not particularly gifted at maths. After the talk, David wrote down 179 for Matthew and asked him to explain how it worked. What did David write down? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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YNYYNNYY. Of course, Chocky was trying to get Matthew to use binary. Matthew himself came up with the ideas of Y and N to represent 1 and 0. Chocky thought it was silly "to bother with ten different figures just because you've ten fingers, when all you really need is two fingers". The wrong answers are 179 in Roman numerals (CLXXIX), octal (263) and base 16 (B3).
No. David found Matthew in "a near-hysterical condition of anger and outrage" because Chocky had said "that the engine is funny, and old-fashioned, and wasteful, and that an engine that needed gears was ridiculous anyway. And that a car that didn't use an engine to stop itself as well as make itself go was stupid. And how it was terribly funny to think of anyone making a car that had to have springs because it bumped along the ground on wheels that had to have things like sausages fastened around them." Matthew loved the family's new car and was fiercely indignant about Chocky's criticism. David began to think that they really needed advice about Matthew after this episode.
| Mary and David consulted a psychologist, Dr Landis, about Matthew. After the consultation, what word did Dr Landis use that alienated Mary? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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Possession. Dr Landis thought Matthew's case was fascinating. He was also convinced that 'something' had got into Matthew. He explained that our unscientific ancestors would have called it 'possession' - at which point he completely lost Mary, who still thought Chocky was an imaginary friend. David realised it had been the use of the word 'possession' and thought it "an error of judgement - of a kind one did not expect from a psychologist - and once it had been made the damage was done."
| Next, David and Mary found some art of Matthew's that was very good, but a bit strange. Matthew explained that he made his mind blank and 'saw' though Chocky's eyes. What did he liken it to? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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Riding a bicycle with no hands. Matthew said that the first couple of times was like "no brakes" , but after he got used to it, it was like riding a bicycle with no hands, but with Chocky doing the steering as well. David ascertained that it never happened by accident, and that Matthew had to make a conscious effort, but Mary thought that 'it' (she still would not accept that Chocky was a real entity) was 'taking control' of Matthew.
| During the family's summer holiday with friends, there was an accident with a boat and Matthew and Polly were knocked into the water. Matthew could not swim, but Chocky stopped him panicking (by being fierce) and somehow Chocky showed his arms and legs how to swim, just as had happened with his hands and painting, so he was able to save not only himself, but Polly. What did the press attribute this to? | John Wyndham's "Chocky"
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A Guardian Angel. The reporter attributed it to a Guardian Angel, not Matthew, who had just said that he had a heard a voice in his head. The item got onto the BBC's 'Today' programme as a light-hearted news item, and then it was picked up by various psychic institutes, well-meaning clergy and more press. Unfortunately, Matthew's art teacher, Miss Soames, had sent (without permission) one of his pictures to an art exhibition, and it had been published in the national papers. David realised it wouldn't be long before somebody connected all this up, so when Dr Landis suggested Matthew went to see the well-known psycho-analyst, Sir William Thorbe, he welcomed it. Unfortunately, Sir William Thorbe had been appointed as an advisory industrial psychologist to a big business group.
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