The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Now this is classic scifi!
More than slightly sexist, but not to the point where you want to high five a man's face with a chair (like I frequently find myself wanting with Heinlein). It's a classic, published in the early 50's, suffering of all the brain damage I expect male scifi writers from that time to suffer.
A plague of blindness came down upon human kind after a spectacular meteorite shower and in the aftermath a certain kind of intelligent and carnivorous plant takes full advantage of the ensuing panic. Our main man, Bill Mason, is one of the few lucky people to have come out with his eye sight intact after the meteorite shower. It's chaos and the rest of the book is spent trying to make heads and tails of life after the Apocalypse.
One of the most frequently voiced criticisms against The Day of the Triffids is that there isn't nearly enough Triffids. I disagree. I think it's more interesting to hear about how humans react to disaster/apocalypse/alien invasion. That was the appeal of the movies Jaw and Alien - we dealt more with people's reactions than with the actual monster and that's what made it great. Just how do you rebuild society again when 80% of the population is blind and most of the men who still have their eyesight suddenly turn into arrogant harem-building dictator wannabes? If you can distance yourself from the sexism, which is more telling about the author than anything else, it's interesting.
I enjoyed it.
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