In Trouble with Lichen he asks, isn’t it time we did something to rethink marriage as an institution?ĭiana takes her degree in biochemistry, and goes to work for a private research institution, where, one day, she notices a peculiar result from a stray contamination of some milk by a new sample of lichen just arrived from Mongolia. He had long shown feminist sympathies in his fiction, since the early 1950s in The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. Wyndham is reflecting a very conservative society in his alternative present-day, because his plot of altered life expectancy requires a very conservative society to be broken apart by its implications. Diana’s mother is resigned to Diana going to university, taking an excellent degree, and getting a very much sought-after job, but, really, she’s got to think of her future: how will she meet men in that isolated research station? seriously frightening imagery, of a woman scientist? (ignore price sticker)

They are rather startled by her dispassionate argument that society, on the other hand, thinks that a girl is more successful if she’s bedworthy rather than brainworthy. Trouble with Lichen begins with Diana Brackley’s teachers congratulating her on her success at gaining a place at Cambridge with a scholarship to read chemistry. It reads at least a decade older than that, maybe even fifteen years, since it shares many of the plot points and social indicators of Josephine’s Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946), also a novel questioning what young women should do with their lives after school, and also wrapped up with murder, biology and jealousy. When I reread it, for what must have been the 50 th time, I was surprised to see that it was first published in 1960.

Trouble With Lichen is John Wyndham’s most explicit exploration of the uselessness of modern women’s lives. My falling-apart edition, a fairly scary cover if you don’t like needles

Trouble with lichen by john wyndham