Trouble with Lichen: Classic Science Fiction

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Trouble With Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians? The moral premise of this book is simple. People waste their youth because they are young. The old hate them for it. They always have. In my day we walked uphill both ways. The forward momentum of technology means that every generation of children has more opportunities, less obstacles and a more comfortable existence. And every previous generation is successively convinced that they would have done more given those opportunities because they did more with less. Wyndham’s premise is that this is obviously bullshit. People will consistently, on average, do the bare minimum with what they have regardless of the ease of getting there because they are young and dumb and proverbially (yet more family friendly than the original saying), more interested in marriage and fitting in than doing more .

After a customer suffers an allergic reaction to one of Diana's products, the secret of the drug begins to emerge. Diana tries to cover up the real source of the drug, since the lichen is very rare and difficult to grow, but when it is finally discovered she fakes her own death in the hope of inspiring the women of Britain to fight for the rights she tried to secure for them.Once again, Wyndham wrote such a compelling story on how society would deal with a life changing discovery. Second I found it technically 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.

John Wyndham wrote 7 novels, I have read 6 so far. This is the only one not rated 3 stars. This novel gets all tangled up like someone falling on the floor whilst wildly trying to put their pyjama trousers on. He has a very solid sf idea and he wants to use it to spotlight how women’s lives in particular are crippled and bent out of shape under society’s current rules, and this is all good, but the whole thing seems to be played for laughs….I should say for smirks…and his ghastly elbow-in-ribcage old-fashioned unfunny comic writing will just grind the teeth of modern readers.It was a genius move for John Wyndham to center an age-slowing narrative on women, who are still today pressured to remain youthful-looking forever, or succumb to social invisibility. . . . Wyndham was uniquely gifted at skewering humankind’s foibles while maintaining a shred of hope that our better angels would prevail.”—Kate Folk, from the introduction The book, of course, is hardly a perfect affair. As I mentioned, it is a bit dry, essentially humorless and, unavoidably, a bit dated in some instances (for example, the reference to the British newspaper "The Chronicle," which folded in 1960, and to the Russian newspaper "Izvestia," which ceased publishing in 1991). Much of the dialogue feels overwritten, especially that between Diana and Saxover, but I suppose that two bona fide geniuses just might be expected to converse in such a manner. Several plot points--such as the matter of Saxover's daughter-in-law stealing the antigerone secret--just peter out, never to be heard of again. And the book really is awfully talky; this reader could have done with a few more exciting sequences, such as the one in which Zephanie (is that really a name, by the way?) and her fiancé are kidnapped and coerced to spill information regarding her father's discovery. But basically, "Trouble with Lichen" is a novel of ideas, and of the effects on society of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the age. Fortunately, Wyndham keeps his story moving at a brisk clip, and even reserves for his readers a wonderful surprise ending of sorts. And in this year of 2017, in which the very notions of science, facts and research are being denigrated and pooh-poohed by so many, how nice to come across a book with this telling statement about the matter...and from the British prime minister, no less: This shared task (1-6 players) begins with in Lichen Creep, approximate location -1355, 1110, -740 (accessed only via portal - location of portal needed). For such enlightened statements as these, "Trouble with Lichen" is worthy of any modern reader's approbation. Trouble With Lichenwas on our suggested reading list because of the central premise of the book, that life could be prolonged by slowing down the ageing process. This raised many discussion points for the group members. First, who would benefit? As Diana, the main character, asks in the book:

Trouble with Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks, how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians?The greatest enemies of women aren't men at all, they are women: silly women, lazy women, and smug women. Smug women are the worst; their profession is being women, and they just hate any women who make any other kind of professional success...." And what of my experiment? Unfortunately, rereading this did not help me connect with my younger self the way some of my other rereads did. I thought that perhaps even if I disliked the book the second time around, the experience of rereading it would stir up something meaningful like a memory or an insight, even a vague one. But it didn’t really do anything. PDF / EPUB File Name: Trouble_with_Lichen_-_John_Wyndham.pdf, Trouble_with_Lichen_-_John_Wyndham.epub I know one of the factors in my earlier dislike of the novel was that I was expecting something quite different from what I got. That of course is not a factor in my current dislike. I have learned not to evaluate a book based on what I thought it would be rather than what it actually is. This is a lesson I try to impart to my students (and anyone else who wanders past my soapbox while I’m pontificating).