Through his experiences as an illustrator in the Sudan, Dick Heldar wins both professional success and a firm friend in the war correspondent Torpenhow. He is in love with his foster sister Maisie, an artists, who is shallow and selfish. Dick goes blind from a sword cut. Maisie heartless leaves Dick to his fate and he carries out his plan of dying.

What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind--and humanity at the mercy of mysterious carnivorous plants? Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he soon realizes that surviving in this new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids--plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous...