Modern Classics The Death Of Grass

Author: John Christopher

Also known as No Blade of Grass, this was one of John Christopher's classic cosy catastrophes, although there is very little that is cosy in this post-apocalyptic tale.In Asia, a new disease starts to affect rice crops, leading to widespread famine. Soon, the virus mutates and starts to attack all forms of grass, including such staple food crops as wheat and barley. The result is anarchy and panic, amid which John Custance tries to lead his family and friends safely across England to where his brother has a potato farm. Along the way, as their entourage grows, they find themselves abandoning all their old morality in order to survive, including committing murder. The portrait of a society disintegrating in the face of starvation is what makes this such a compelling story. Cosy catastrophe, the rather demeaning name for a strand of British science fiction in the 1950s and early 60s, was actually a continuation of the scientific romances that imagined various forms of the destruction of the familiar world. Christopher was a master of this, picturing far from cosy worlds in which his protagonists have to become increasingly hardened and ruthless in the face of a fragile environment.

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Alternative Choice
The Tripods is a young adult sequence that is probably Christopher's best known and most successful work. It is set in a world enslaved by aliens, who are seen only in their giant Tripod walking machines (reminiscent of H.G. Wells's Martians) through which they exert their authority. Human technology has mostly been pushed back to a medieval level, most people live only in small rural villages, and they are kept docile by implanted "caps". But there is a resistance, and the teenage heroes of the novel escape being capped and join the resistance.

Christopher's other catastrophe novels include A Wrinkle in the Skin, in which massive earthquakes dramatically change the landscape. The story follows a trek across what was once the English Channel in an attempt to find survivors. The World in Winter suggests that a reduction in solar radiation results in a new ice age, with survivors from Britain fleeing sounth to Africa whwere they find themselves treated as second-class citizens.