Trouble with Lichen - Tapa blanda

It was Diana Brackley who put the milk out for the cat; who dropped a speck of Lichen in it by mistake; who noticed how the Lichen stopped the milk turning. But it was Francis Saxover, the famous Biochemist, who carries on from there, who developed antigerone, the cure for ageing; who then tried to suppress a discovery which was certainly in the megaton range. And so it was Diana Brackley who went to town with the antigerone in one of John Wyndham's gayest and most satirical forays into the fantastic.

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'. As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes (both widely translated), The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge (with Lucas Parkes) and Chocky. He died in March 1969.