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| Not a good representation of the contents |
was the US title of John Christopher catastrophe-survivors novel. As with "The Death of Grass", Christopher telescopes time to show us the descent into feudalism and lawlessness that follows a natural disaster, in this case world-wide seismic activity.
It might be possible to suggest that earthquakes of the magnitude Christopher describes would cause much more damage, and that the effects would not be a few mere aftershocks, but instead a continuous upheaval that ensured that no life survived, but at the end of it all the science doesn't matter. What counts is his depiction of people at the ragged edge of civilisation, some of them intent on making a niche for themselves as rulers of new micro-kingdoms, some intent on create a more harmonious communal existence.
This was one of the first "science fiction" books I ever read and, of course, it isn't "science fiction" at all, but a story of people under extreme conditions. And forty five years after that first reading, I still remember vividly so many of the scenes and incidents; a tribute to John Christopher's writing powers.
Unputdownability : desperate for the hero's salvation, but afraid to turn the page in case something nasty happens.
I said I was going on a John Christopher jag,
and with two down, I don't think that it was a bad decision at all.
TDoG is a great British post-apocalypse novel. Imagine "Day of the Triffids" but without a happy ending. The speed with which Christopher's characters devolve from middle-class civility into a neo-feudalism is both astonishing and completely believable. The premise is simple, and all to realistic - a virus attacks and destroys all forms of grass, including the members of the genus that provide our daily bread. A middle class engineer sets out with his family to escape London and the coming civil disturbance, and join his brother on a farm in the North of England where they believe they will be safe. He takes with him a small assortment of people - his friend and bridge opponent (funny how bridge is seen as a symbol of civilisation in the face of calamitous upheaval; see Robert A. Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" for another example), a semi-abaonded schoolboy, and an ageing gun-dealer and his loose-moraled wife.
One hundred and ninety four pages, and a few days later (Christopher is wonderfully economical with his prose and his timelines) everything in their lives has changed. Don't go into this novel expecting "classic science fiction" - it is, instead, a novel which shows how ordinary people respond to extraordinary circumstances and you find yourself asking "Would I do the same things if I were in their position?"
Unputdownability : You have to pause for breath regularly.
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| Nothing like this happens in the book. |
Christopher is one of the unremembered greats of the British SF scene, although if you are in your Forties, or thereabouts, "The Tripods" maybe a children's TV series that lingers in the recesses of your memory. He sits slightly uncomfortably alongside John Wyndham in the "post-apocalypse" sub-genre but, unlike Wyndham's optimistic view of humanities chance of surviving and restoring "civilisation", his visions are often much bleaker.
"The Guardians" is a prophetic work, set in a britain where class distinctions are much more sharply drawn than they were at the time of writing (around 1970), with the proletariat confinded to the Urban areas, where they are kept employed in blue collar and manual jobs, and entertained by 3-D TV, tribalised sports, and sporadic rioting. The upper classes live in the fenced-off County, enjoying their wealth and engaging in the pastimes of the archetypal aristocracy (hunting, shooting, fishing and meaningless hobbies).
The story tells of a prole boy who escapes into the country, only to meet up with a public schoolboy intent on bringing down society.
Economically told (less than 200 pages long), simple in style, this reads like it should have been an instant classic; perhaps its open ending proved too uncomfortable for its intended audience.
Unputdownability: Have I reached the end alread?
