Trouble with Lichen: Classic Science Fiction

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I read several Wyndham novels when I was 12 or 13 - this was one of them. My recollection of those novels was that they were enjoyable but tended to have poor endings, as if Wyndham had said what he wanted, got bored and just stopped. The exception was The Day of the Triffids which had a satisfactory ending. So how would I respond to re-reading Trouble with Lichen?

I think Francis’s pessimism is more warranted. The supply of lichen is very restricted. Who gets to decide who gets the drug? Will it be only the super-rich? Only the influential? What happens to those left behind? Can you imagine the riots in France when the pension age gets raised to 100, when they are having difficulty accepting 64?! How do you decide a pension age if some will be healthy and active at 200, and some run out of puff at the more traditional pension age of 67. And what about those with dementia or long-standing health issues? Long life is not always a boon. What about the young, having to wait an eternity before getting a position/accommodation/meaningful life? We already have overpopulation and a strain on natural resources – will not lichen just tip the balance and destroy the world before our civilisation has time to adapt? Can you imagine the future if men like Trump or Putin had a lifespan of hundreds of years? Lichen does not make you immortal, just slows aging. A “sharp, amusing story” ( The Guardian) about the fountain of youth and its implications for women’s rights, by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” 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

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. urn:lcp:troublewithliche0000unse:epub:acf22d7b-f5c4-4dbd-bb8d-ad015f85b924 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier troublewithliche0000unse Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7qp5th91 Invoice 1652 Lccn 88175180 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.6 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19874 Openlibrary_edition 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...."

how many people are going to favour the prospect of long life at the cost of, say, two or three hundred years as an underling[…] because behind them all is the assumption that the days of our age are three score years and ten, or thereabouts. Take that away, and they won’t work, most of them will even lose their whole raison d’etre’. John Wyndham, Trouble With Lichen (Penguin, 1960 (this edition 2008)), p. 87 This shared task (1-6 players) begins with in Lichen Creep, approximate location -1355, 1110, -740 (accessed only via portal - location of portal needed).The story involves two scientists who discover a lichen, which can slow down the aging process considerably. They work independently to develop the drug, and keep their findings secret – even from each other, though they had identified the lichen together.