1. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes.
20 Facts About John Wyndham
1. 2.
John Wyndham's best known works include The Day of the Triffids, filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos, 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.
3.
Wyndham was born in the village of Dorridge near Knowle, Warwickshire, England, the son of Gertrude Parkes, the daughter of the Birmingham ironmaster John Israel Parkes, and her second husband, George Beynon Harris, a barrister.
4.
John 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, and Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, during the First World War.
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John Wyndham's mother left Birmingham to live in a series of boarding houses and spa hotels.
6.
In John Wyndham's self-penned biographical notes for his early Penguin Books publications, he said he lived in Birmingham only from 1904 to 1911.
7.
John Wyndham eventually turned to writing for money in 1925 and by 1931 he was selling short stories and serial fiction to American science fiction magazines.
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William Blake 8.
John Wyndham 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.
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John Wyndham 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.
10.
John Wyndham then joined the British Army, serving as a corporal cipher operator in the Royal Corps of Signals.
11.
John Wyndham participated in the Normandy landings, landing a few days after D-Day.
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John Wyndham wrote at length of his struggles with his conscience, his doubts about humanity and his fears of the inevitability of further war.
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John Wyndham 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.
14.
John Wyndham's 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.
15.
John Wyndham wrote and published six more novels under the name John Wyndham, the name he used professionally from 1951.
16.
John Wyndham's reputation rests mainly on the first four of the novels published in his life under that name.
17.
John Wyndham was a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate.
18.
John Wyndham wrote an introduction to a new edition of Chocky in which she states that the intelligent alien babies in The Midwich Cuckoos entered her dreams.
19.
John Wyndham wrote several short stories, ranging from hard science fiction to whimsical fantasy.
20.
John Wyndham's archive was acquired by the University of Liverpool.