CHRISTOPHER, John

   Working name of UK writer Christopher Samuel Youd (1922-), active as an sf fan before WWII, in which he served; he began publishing sf proper with "Christmas Story" for ASF in 1949, writing as Christopher Youd. His first novel, The Winter Swan (1949), again as by Youd, was a fantasy. His first sf book, The Twenty-Second Century (coll 1954; with 1 story dropped and 1 added, rev 1962 US) as JC, assembles his early work; but, after the success of his first sf novel, The Year of the Comet (1955; vt Planet in Peril 1959 US), and the even greater impact of his second, The Death of Grass (1956; vt No Blade of Grass 1957 US), he concentrated for some years on adult novels, soon becoming perceived as John WYNDHAM's rival and successor as the premier writer of the post-WWII UK DISASTER novel in the decade 1955-65.The disaster which changes the face of England (and of the world) in The Death of Grass (filmed in 1970 by Cornel Wilde as NO BLADE OF GRASS) is, as the title makes clear, an upset in the balance of Nature which causes the extinction of all grass and related food plants, with catastrophic effects. Where Wyndham's novels featured protagonists whose middle-class indomitability signalled to the reader that the crisis would somehow come out right in the end, JC's characters - as witness John Custance's gradual hardening and deterioration of personality in this novel - inhabit and respond to a darker, less secure universe. It is a harshness of perspective characteristic of most of his work at this time: The World in Winter (1962; vt The Long Winter 1962 US), A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965; vt The Ragged Edge 1966 US) and Pendulum (1968 US) all deal decks similarly stacked against political or environmental complacency, and their protagonists concentrate on the grim business of staying alive and making a life fit to live in a post- HOLOCAUST world stripped of culture and security.When JC turned to other kinds of stories his touch was less assured, though Sweeney's Island (1964 US; vt Cloud on Silver 1964 UK) plausibly updates the traditional ISLAND theme as the eponymous tycoon creates a DYSTOPIAN microcosm under stress. However, in 1967 JC successfully inaugurated a fresh phase of his sf career, this time in the juvenile market, with the Tripods sequence: The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and Lead (1967) and The Pool of Fire (1968), assembled as The Tripods Trilogy (omni 1980 US); a prequel, When the Tripods Came (1988 US), followed much later. In these books, the alien tripods control all adults. However, the young protagonists avoid their thrall, discover their secret and save Earth (whose adults revert to their distressing old ways). Other juveniles followed: The Lotus Caves (1969), The Guardians (1970) - which appropriately won the Guardian award for best children's book of the year - Dom and Va (1973), much expanded from In the Beginning (1972 chap), a tale for smaller children, Wild Jack (1974 US), Empty World (1977), the Fireball trilogy - Fireball (1981), New Found Land (1983) and Dragon Dance (1986) - set in a PARALLEL-WORLD version of Roman Britain and elsewhere and A Dusk of Demons (1993), set in a post-holocaust Scotland. The Prince in Waiting (1970), Beyond the Burning Lands (1971) and The Sword of the Spirits (1972), assembled as The Swords of the Spirits Trilogy (omni 1980 US; vt The Prince in Waiting Trilogy 1983 UK), is FANTASY. As with his adult sf, most of JC's juveniles are set in a post- DISASTER situation, in which the romantic individualism of young protagonists finds itself pitted against some kind of conformist or even brainwashed system, sometimes symbolized as a struggle between the country and the city. They have been remarkably and deservedly popular.

   JC/PN

   Other works: The Caves of Night (1958 US), marginal; The Long Voyage (1960; vt The White Voyage 1961 US), a juvenile; The Possessors (1964 US); The Little People (1966 US).

   About the author: Christopher Samuel Youd, Master of All Genres: A Working Bibliography (1990 chap) by Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.

   See also: CHILDREN'S SF; ECOLOGY; GREAT AND SMALL; PASTORAL; PUBLISHING; RADIO; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES.