September 1960
Mr. Wyndham seems always able to get hold of a startling idea and then make it fearfully convincing and likely, and is consequently compulsive light reading. This time the head of a small research unit discovers some mysterious properties in a little known lichen. At first the discovery seems the answer to one of the oldest dreams known to man, but its discoverers soon run into difficulties. The lichen grows in one very small area in a province of Manchuria: there is not enough of it to treat more than a few thousand people, and the political, economic and social implications of this are soon alarming. The story is ingeniously worked to the restful conclusion of the two people most concerned with the lichen settling down to further research, and living happily for far longer than the fairy tales mean when they talk about ‘forever after’. This book is rather carelessly written, unlike The Day of the Triffids: for instance, people call each other by their names far too often, as they do in amateur plays, and there are other marks of haste or indifference.