John Wyndham facts for kids

Quick facts for kids John Wyndham
Born	John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (1903-07-10)10 July 1903 Dorridge, Warwickshire, England
Died	11 March 1969(1969-03-11) (aged 65) Petersfield, Hampshire, England
Occupation	Science fiction writer
Spouse(s)	Grace Wilson ​ (m. 1963)​

Wyndham's first published sf story, "Worlds to Barter", was published in the May 1931 issue of Wonder Stories, under his pen name John Beynon Harris.

Wyndham/Harris as pictured in the May 1931 Wonder Stories

Wyndham's second story, "The Lost Machine", was cover-featured on the April 1932 issue of Amazing Stories, also under his Harris pen name

Wyndham's 1934 novelette "The Moon Devils" was the cover story for the April issue of Wonder Stories, also under the Harris pen name.

Wyndham's 1951 novelette "Tyrant and Slave-Girl on Planet Venus" was the cover story for the first and only issue of Ten Story Fantasy, under his pen name John Beynon.

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (/ˈwɪndəm/; 10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.

Biography

Early life

Wyndham was born in the village of Dorridge near Knowle, Warwickshire (now West Midlands), England, the son of Gertrude Parkes, the daughter of the Birmingham ironmaster John Israel Parkes, and her second husband (after widowhood), George Beynon Harris, a barrister.

From 1909 to 1911 the Harris family lived at 239 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, but when he was 8 years old his parents separated. His father then attempted to sue the Parkes family for "the custody, control and society" of his wife and two sons (including Wyndham's younger brother, the writer Vivian Beynon Harris), in an unusual and high-profile 1913 court case, which he lost. The case left Wyndham's father a broken man. Gertrude moved with the children to a smaller house in Edgbaston and the brothers became estranged from their father. Wyndham subsequently attended a private school in Edgbaston run by a Miss Mabel Woodward, and from 1914 to 1915 was at Edgbaston High School for Boys (he later said that while there he was bullied), and Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, during the First World War. His longest and final stay was at Bedales School, near Petersfield in Hampshire (1918–1921), which he left at the age of 18.

His mother left Birmingham to live in a series of boarding houses and spa hotels. In Wyndham's self-penned biographical notes for his early Penguin Books publications, he said he lived in Birmingham only from 1904 to 1911.

Early career

After leaving school, Wyndham tried several careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising; however, he mostly relied on an allowance from his family to survive. He eventually turned to writing for money in 1925 and by 1931 he was selling short stories and serial fiction to American science fiction magazines. His debut short story, "Worlds to Barter", appeared under the pen name John B. Harris in 1931. Subsequent stories were credited to 'John Beynon Harris' until mid-1935, when he began to use the pen name John Beynon. Three novels as by Beynon were published in 1935/36, two of them works of science fiction, the other a detective story. He also used the pen name Wyndham Parkes for one short story in the British Fantasy Magazine in 1939, as John Beynon had already been credited for another story in the same issue. During these years he lived at the Penn Club, London, which had been opened in 1920 by the remaining members of the Friends Ambulance Unit, and which had been partly funded by the Quakers. The intellectual and political mixture of pacifists, socialists and communists continued to inform his views on social engineering and feminism. At the Penn Club he met his future wife, Grace Wilson, a teacher. They embarked on a long-lasting love affair, and obtained adjacent rooms in the club, but for many years did not marry, partly because of the marriage bar under which Wilson would have lost her position.

Second World War

During the Second World War, Wyndham first served as a censor in the Ministry of Information. He drew on his experiences as a firewatcher during the London Blitz and as a member of the Home Guard in The Day of the Triffids.

He then joined the British Army, serving as a corporal cipher operator in the Royal Corps of Signals. He participated in the Normandy landings, landing a few days after D-Day. He was attached to XXX Corps, which took part in some of the heaviest fighting, including surrounding the trapped German army in the Falaise Pocket.

His wartime letters to his long-time partner, Grace Wilson, are now held in the Archives of the University of Liverpool. He wrote at length of his struggles with his conscience, his doubts about humanity and his fears of the inevitability of further war. He also wrote passionately about his love for her and his fears that he would be so tainted she would not be able to love him when he returned.

Postwar

After the war Wyndham returned to writing, still using the pen name John Beynon. Inspired by the success of his younger brother Vivian Beynon Harris, who had four novels published starting in 1948, he altered his writing style and by 1951, using the John Wyndham pen name for the first time, he wrote the novel The Day of the Triffids. His pre-war writing career was not mentioned in the book's publicity and people were allowed to assume that this was a first novel from an unknown writer. The book had an enormous success and established Wyndham as an important exponent of science fiction.

He wrote and published six more novels under the name John Wyndham, the name he used professionally from 1951. His novel The Outward Urge (1959) was credited to John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes but Lucas Parkes was another pseudonym for Wyndham. Two story collections, Jizzle and The Seeds of Time, were published in the 1950s under Wyndham's name but included several stories originally published as by John Beynon before 1951.

Marriage

In 1963, he married Grace Isobel Wilson, whom he had known for more than thirty years, in a civil ceremony. They lived near Petersfield, Hampshire, just outside the grounds of Bedales School, until his death there in 1969, aged 65. The couple were childless, as was his brother, who also outlived him.

Legacy

After his death, some of Wyndham's unsold work was published and his earlier work was republished. His archive was acquired by the University of Liverpool.

On 24 May 2015, an alley in Hampstead that appears in The Day of the Triffids was formally named Triffid Alley as a memorial to him.

Works

Novels

Early pseudonymous novels

• The Curse of the Burdens (1927), as by John B. Harris: Aldine Mystery Novels No. 17 (London: Aldine Publishing Co. Ltd) is sometimes attributed to Wyndham but, beyond a vague similarity of names, there is no evidence that he wrote it.
• The Secret People (1935), as by John Beynon
• Foul Play Suspected (1935), as by John Beynon
• Planet Plane (1936), as by John Beynon; republished as The Space Machine and as Stowaway to Mars

Published in his lifetime as by John Wyndham

• The Day of the Triffids (1951), also known as Revolt of the Triffids
• The Kraken Wakes (1953), published in the U.S. as Out of the Deeps, also known as The Things from the Deep
• The Chrysalids (1955), published in the U.S. as Re-Birth
• The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
• The Outward Urge (1959), fix-up novel of 4 novelettes and 1 short story, as by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes:

  "The Space Station: A.D. 1994" (novelette), "The Moon: A.D. 2044" (novelette), "Mars: A.D. 2094" (novelette), "Venus: A.D. 2144" (novelette), "The Emptiness of Space: The Asteroids A.D. 2194" (added in 1961)

• Trouble with Lichen (1960)
• Chocky (1968)

Posthumously published

• Web (1979)
• Plan for Chaos (2009)

Short stories

Short story collections published in his lifetime

• Jizzle (1954), collection of 13 short stories and 2 novelettes:

  "Jizzle", "Technical Slip" (as by John Beynon), "A Present from Brunswick", "Chinese Puzzle" (novelette), "Esmeralda", "How Do I Do?", "Una" (novelette), "Affair of the Heart", "Confidence Trick", "The Wheel", "Look Natural, Please!", "Perforce to Dream", "Reservation Deferred", "Heaven Scent", "More Spinned Against"

• The Seeds of Time (1956), collection of 5 short stories and 5 novelettes:

  "The Chronoclasm" (novelette), "Pillar to Post" (novelette), "Dumb Martian" (novelette), "Compassion Circuit", "Survival" (novelette), "Pawley's Peepholes", "Opposite Number", "Wild Flower", "Time to Rest" (as by John Beynon, Bert #1 series), "Meteor" (novelette, as by John Beynon)

• Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956), United States edition featuring stories from the Jizzle and The Seeds of Time collections, collection of 9 short stories and 2 novelettes:

  "Chinese Puzzle" (novelette), "Una" (novelette), "The Wheel", "Jizzle", "Heaven Scent", "Compassion Circuit", "More Spinned Against...", "A Present from Brunswick", "Confidence Trick", "Opposite Number", "Wild Flower"

• Consider Her Ways and Others (1961), collection of 3 short stories and 3 novelettes/novellas:

  "Consider Her Ways" (novella), "Odd", "Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRaffery?" (novelette), "A Stitch in Time", "Random Quest" (novelette), "A Long Spoon"

• The Infinite Moment (1961), United States edition of Consider Her Ways and Others with two stories dropped and two others added, collection of 3 short stories and 3 novelettes/novellas:

  "Consider Her Ways" (novella), "Odd", "How Do I Do", "Stitch in Time", "Random Quest" (novelette), "Time Out" (novelette)

Posthumously published collections

• Sleepers of Mars (1973), collection of 1 short story, 3 novelettes and 1 novella, originally published in magazines in the 1930s:

  "Sleepers of Mars" (novella), "Worlds to Barter" (novelette), "Invisible Monster" (novelette), "The Man from Earth" (novelette), "The Third ..."

• The Best of John Wyndham (1973), collection of 6 short stories and 6 novelettes:

  "The Lost Machine" (novelette), "The Man from Beyond" (novelette), "The Perfect Creature" (novelette), "The Trojan Beam" (novelette), "Vengeance by Proxy" (as by John Beynon), "Adaptation", "Pawley's Peepholes", "The Red Stuff" (novelette), "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down", "Dumb Martian" (novelette), "Close Behind Him", "The Emptiness of Space"

• Wanderers of Time (1973), collection of 1 short story and 4 novelettes, originally published in magazines in the 1930s:

  "Wanderers of Time" (novelette), "Derelict of Space" (novelette), "Child of Power" (novelette), "The Last Lunarians", "The Puff-ball Menace" (novelette)

• The Man from Beyond and Other Stories (1975), hardback with the same contents as The Best of John Wyndham
• Exiles on Asperus (1979), collection of 2 novelettes and 1 novella, as by John Beynon:

  "Exiles on Asperus" (novelette, as by John Beynon Harris), "No Place Like Earth" (novelette, Bert #2 series), "The Venus Adventure" (novella)

• No Place Like Earth (2003), collection of 10 short stories and 6 novelettes:

  "Derelict of Space" (novelette, as by John Beynon), "Time to Rest" (Bert #1 series), "No Place Like Earth" (novelette, as by John Beynon, Bert #2 series), "In Outer Space There Shone a Star", "But a Kind of Ghost", "The Cathedral Crypt" (as by John Beynon Harris), "A Life Postponed" (novelette), "Technical Slip" (as by John Beynon Harris), "Una" (novelette), "It's a Wise Child", "Pillar to Post" (novelette), "The Stare", "Time Stops Today" (novelette), "The Meddler", "Blackmoil", "A Long Spoon"

Uncollected short stories

• "Vivisection" (1919), as by J. W. B. Harris
• "Judson's Annihilator", or "Beyond the Screen" (1938), novelette, as by John Beynon
• "The Living Lies" (1946), novelette, as by John Beynon
• "The Eternal Eve" (1950)
• "Never on Mars" (1954), as by John Beynon
• "Brief to Counsel" (1959)
• "Chocky" (1963), novella, developed into novel Chocky

All short stories

Poems

• "Hiroshima" (1974), as by John Beynon

Adaptations

• Village of the Damned (1960), film directed by Wolf Rilla, based on novel The Midwich Cuckoos
• "The Long Spoon" (1961), episode of the series Storyboard, directed by James MacTaggart, based on short story "A Long Spoon"
• "Maria" (1961), episode of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, directed by Boris Sagal, based on short story "Jizzle"
• "Dumb Martian" (1962), episode of the series Armchair Theatre and Out of This World, directed by Charles Jarrott, based on novelette "Dumb Martian"
• The Day of the Triffids (1963), film directed by Steve Sekely and Freddie Francis, based on novel The Day of the Triffids
• Children of the Damned (1964), film directed by Anton Leader, based on novel The Midwich Cuckoos
• "Consider Her Ways" (1964), episode of the series The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, directed by Robert Stevens, based on novella "Consider Her Ways"
• "No Place Like Earth" (1965), episode of the series Out of the Unknown, directed by Peter Potter, based on short story "Time to Rest" and novelette "No Place on Earth"
• "Random Quest" (1969), episode of the series Out of the Unknown, directed by Christopher Barry, based on novelette "Random Quest"
• Quest for Love (1971), film directed by Ralph Thomas, based on novelette "Random Quest"
• Ördögi szerencse (1978), TV movie directed by Vilmos Dobai, based on short story "A Long Spoon"
• "More Spinned Against" (1980), episode of the series Spine Chillers, based on short story "More Spinned Against"
• The Day of the Triffids (1981), miniseries directed by Ken Hannam, based on novel The Day of the Triffids
• Chocky (1984), series directed by Vic Hughes and Christopher Hodson, based on novel Chocky
• Chocky's Children (1985), series directed by Vic Hughes and Peter Duguid, based on characters from the novel Chocky
• Chocky's Challenge (1986), series directed by Bob Blagden, based on characters from the novel Chocky
• Village of the Damned (1995), film directed by John Carpenter, based on novel The Midwich Cuckoos
• Random Quest (1986), TV movie directed by Luke Watson, based on novelette "Random Quest"
• The Day of the Triffids (2009), miniseries directed by Nick Copus, based on novel The Day of the Triffids
• The Midwich Cuckoos (2022), miniseries directed by Alice Troughton, Jennifer Perrott and Börkur Sigþórsson, based on novel The Midwich Cuckoos

See also

In Spanish: John Wyndham para niños