John Wyndham, well known for his Triffids, krakens, chrysalids, and cuckoos, created another horror that’s almost entirely forgotten.

When the big-time psychologists make lists of the world’s most ‘popular’ phobias, one particular life-form keeps crawling to the top of the list: spiders. And British author John Wyndham, who died way back in 1969, knew it better than anyone. That’s why he wrote about a bunch of misguided Brits who go to a pacific island, long-evacuated for nuclear testing, to start a new Utopian society, and end up fighting huge arachnids…worse, arachnids that hunt them in packs.

You’d think a great horror/apocalypse idea like this, from an acknowledged master of the genre, would jump into print and stay there for half a century. Not so. In this case, his novel of the eight-legged apocalypse didn’t even see print until ten years after his death, and it’s been out of print literally for decades.

But it’s still out there. Silent. Motionless. Waiting for you to stick your hand into some long-abandoned shadowy corner of the used book store so it can leap —

Mmm, maybe better to just order a copy off Amazon right here. You can still find a few for under $20. And whoever controls the estate of John Wyndham…come on, this is gold. 

Special thanks to Horrorpedia.com for pointing this out first…