John Wyndham finally finds some recognition

Today (24th May 2015) the British science fiction author John Wyndham finally gained some official recognition by the naming of a previously nameless London NW3 passageway as Triffid Alley. According to David Langford, the idea came from local resident and Wyndham biographer David Ketterer, who identifies this wheelie-bin repository as the very alley used by the hero to escape vegetable horror in The Day of the Triffids and adds "This tribute to John Wyndham will be the only public recognition he has received in England."

Although a prolific writer, Wyndham (who died in 1969 aged just 65 – he was actually younger than the late Terry Pratchett) is best know for four sci-fi novels published in the 1950s.

• The Day of the Triffids (1951), also known as Revolt of the Triffids – also adapted several times for television and radio
• The Kraken Wakes (1953), published in the US as Out of the Deeps
• The Chrysalids (1955), published in the US as Re-Birth
• The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), filmed twice as Village of the Damned

Trivia Corner: Most of Wyndham's novels have a contemporary 1950s English middle-class setting, prompting Brian Aldiss to once label them as "cosy catastrophes." The blond-haired, glowing-eyed children in the movie adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos was the inspiration for both the fantasy scene in the Bonnie Tyler music video Total Eclipse of the Heart and the album cover design by Hipgnosis for Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album.