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A review by rogerb
Plan for Chaos by Andy Sawyer, David Ketterer, John Wyndham
3.0
H had acquired this as part of the Wyndham project, and it came to the top of my pile.
It's classic apocalyptic Wyndham, but much inferior to all the others I have read or re-read. To his credit, he knew this as he chose not to publish it and it only emerged [very] posthumously in 2009. Very odd to learn that he was writing Triffids at the same time.
It's very post-war (late 40s), and that backdrop does not influence his others anywhere near as much - with the distance of 80 years it grates rather badly. The language and the characters are much less persuasive than in other books, and it's very laboured - the last 30pp were a real effort to get through, and the very end a trite disappointment.
But 3 stars since he was a good writer and it's not that bad! As I say, to hos credit that he let it on the shelf.
It's classic apocalyptic Wyndham, but much inferior to all the others I have read or re-read. To his credit, he knew this as he chose not to publish it and it only emerged [very] posthumously in 2009. Very odd to learn that he was writing Triffids at the same time.
It's very post-war (late 40s), and that backdrop does not influence his others anywhere near as much - with the distance of 80 years it grates rather badly. The language and the characters are much less persuasive than in other books, and it's very laboured - the last 30pp were a real effort to get through, and the very end a trite disappointment.
But 3 stars since he was a good writer and it's not that bad! As I say, to hos credit that he let it on the shelf.