Kraken up

I read John Wyndham’s apocalyptic Day of the Triffids, at school alongside Brave New World, 1984 and Animal Farm. I recall they were all part of the exam driven syllabus of the period and that triffids with their stings removed were common garden novelties.

After Triffids, Wyndham penned The Kraken Wakes. In this novel, deep sea dwelling aliens have arrived on planet Earth and slowly but surely a war begins between the two species, started by the humans, culminating in the visitors melting the polar ice caps and causing extensive flooding. The UK version of the book is less pessimistic than the US version, and alludes to human civilisation surviving and rebuilding. 

Scottish author, Val McDermid, who has previously based one of her characters on Glencoe-loving Jimmy Savile after he gave her the creeps in 1977, has adapted the book for BBC Radio 4. Instead of the protagonists – The Watsons – being located in Cornwall, rather the action will be set in Scotland with our own government’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, playing the part of herself broadcasting instructions to the surviving humans. Val has apparently thought deeply about the original plot and decided that there is more chance of Scotland being dry land than Cornwall in the event of a global flooding crisis.  (BBC News)

Kraken refers to a legendary sea monster which is said to dwell in the seas of  Greenland and Norway. In the novel, Professor Alastair Bocker speculates that the aliens and humans could co-exist indefinitely, barely noticing each others existence. One assumes that Wyndham deliberated before choosing the story’s title.

Loch Ness is said to hold a monster. Occultist, Aleister Crowley, like Jimmy Savile and Glencoe, was fond of the place. He believed magickally harnessable energies focused themselves thereabouts and so purchased Boleskine House on the banks to conduct his rituals. Some occultists believe that Crowley opened portals to another dimension. His sketch of Lam, an entity he conjured up whilst in New York, shows great resemblance to the common or garden grey alien oft depicted nowadays.

cheers

Lam and the little grey men.

Documenting the rise of the bogus Messiah