Wyndham (John) Plan for Chaos.

The Prequel to The Day of the Triffids… Edited by David Ketterer and Andy Sawyer. Introduction by David Ketterer
Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2009.

First edition thus. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.

A near-future thriller set in New York, where Nazis are plotting to create a race of conquering clones (SF Encyclopedia). Written around 1950, at the same time as The Day of the Triffids, it was rejected by publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1951 Wyndham told his American agent Frederik Pohl that he had “messed about with the thing so much that I’ve lost all perspective”, and he abandoned it.

Reviews were mixed. M. John Harrison found it “almost unreadable”; Leo Mellor in The Independent conceded it was not “an extraordinary lost masterpiece” but found it “fascinating”; and Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph praised the way it anticipates Wyndham’s later themes.