Web (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Web
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition hardback cover
author = John Wyndham
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Michael Joseph
release_date = April 1979
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 187 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-7181-1797-2
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Web" is a science fiction novel written by the English science fiction author John Wyndham. The novel was published by the estate of John Wyndham in 1979, ten years after his death.

Plot summary

The events depicted in "Web" are written from the viewpoint of Arnold Delgrange, a man suffering from what would now be described as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They revolve around a failed attempt to establish a utopian colony on an island in the Pacific Ocean remote from civilization, which has suffered fall out and been cursed by the original inhabitants. As a result, intelligent and communally acting spiders have evolved on the island, acting in a manner that endangers all life in the vicinity. As in most Wyndham novels, the key information concerning unfolding events is actually provided by a female character, Dr Camilla Cogent. It is Cogent who first realises that the spiders inhabiting the island chosen for the utopian experiment have evolved intelligence, it is her actions that allow Arnold Delgrange to survive to tell the tale.

A reader of "Web" is left feeling that it is an unfinished work, without the normal polish of Wyndham's other works. One wonders at the character names, which seem like place holders, Camilla Cogent is indeed cogent, another practical female bit player has the surname "Deeds". It does however introduce concepts that are familiar to readers of current thinkers such as Richard Dawkins with much given over to the pressure of evolution and the greed of any species to propagate their kind at any expense. As in a number of other Wyndham works such as The Chrysalids and Midwich Cuckoos the spiders are a new species, potentially able to dominate the world to the exclusion of humankind. There is nothing, in Wyndham's view, sacred about humankind's place in "nature" nor any such thing as the "balance of nature". As in other Wyndham novels, one root cause of the rise of the spiders is humankind's testing of atomic bombs.

Unlike almost all other Wyndham novels, such as "The Kraken Wakes", "The Day of the Triffids" or "The Chrysalids" there is little hope at the conclusion of this novel, the spiders are being found by Camilla Cogent in other locations, despite the nuclear bombing of the island which was their source.