John Christopher, the unreasonably awesome author of the Tripod young-adult novels, has died. John Christopher (1922-2012) – Locus Online
Sad day. On the other hand, has anyone seen that new cartoon? I find I feel rather better about the whole thing after watching that. I expect I’ll be sending away for one of the official fan hats shortly.
R.I.P., Mr. Youd. The Tripods books were the very first sci-fi novels I ever read…I first learned about them on the PBS show “Cover to Cover”, and devoured them when I found them at the library (I was probably 10 or so).
A sad loss. I remember reading the Tripod books as a child and liking them. But the Christopher work that most affected me was The Death of Grass. I read that when I was about 13 and I was terrified by it.
Sorry to hear this. I am a big fan of his. I loved The Tripods and sought out his other books after reading it. I highly recommend The Guardians, and The Death of Grass is another favourite. I suppose they’re all variations on the same post-apocalyptic theme, but it’s a theme that fascinates me, and when it comes to post-apocalyptic stories, he’s the guvnor.
Now his son will never get to Saturn.
(Explanation: The Air Force pilot who the Enterprise beamed aboard in Tomorrow is Yesterday was named John Christopher. In Blish’s version of the story he has Spock, after doing a history computer check, mention that there is a well-know writer by that name but it is a pen name; you are not he. Blish was living in England then so I suppose he had to give a shout out. )
I would love to read that but it’s out of print and impossible to find.
The Tripod books were some of my favorites growing up. I sought them out and re-read them within the past decade, and they were still awesome. Never read the others that y’all mentioned, and will seek them out.
I greatly enjoyed his books as a kid. I am honestly a little surprised he was still alive though. His first novel was from so long ago, I thought he was even older then his 89 and 89 is pretty good in and of itself.
I might need to track down some of his books and reread them. Anyone recall the name of the book he wrote involving Arthur?
Paperback version for a little over US$10.
<rereads listing> Well, crap, it says it’s an abridged version. Who abridges SF novels?
Sorry about that.
Here are some more listings. No mention of abridged in them.
My intro to the tripods was in the Boy’s Life serialization. Very interesting to this preteen.
Mine was also, back in the mid-1980s, a year or two before I was a teenager. I loved them, and sought and read almost all of his YA science fiction, and then much of his earlier adult “cozy catastrophe” science fiction. He was my favorite author from when I was about 12 to about 15 or 16. I had been expecting he’d be passing any time now, and regularly have checked the “Recent Deaths” section on Wikipedia.
A couple years after the Boy’s Life serialization, I found the live action BBC series based on the Tripods trilogy on my local NPR channel and loved, LOVED it. It unfortunately was expensive to make, so only made it about 2/3rds of the way through the trilogy before being cancelled (with some substantial deviations). The Ken Freeman soundtrack still gets semi-regular play in my music collection.
If you liked No Blade of Grass, be sure to check out the decent 1970 movie with the same name, and his YA novel Empty World. If you liked the Tripods trilogy, you will probably appreciate the similar epic nature of his Sword of the Spirits trilogy (also YA science fiction).