John Christopher
John Christopher, born Christopher Samuel Youd on February 12, 1922, in Lancashire, England, was a notable British author primarily recognized for his contributions to science fiction literature. He developed an early interest in writing, leading him to publish an amateur magazine called *The Fantast* during the 1930s. After serving in the Royal Signals Corps during World War II, Christopher began his writing career in earnest, producing his first significant work, *The Winter Swan*, which, despite its innovative structure, did not achieve commercial success. His breakthrough came with the novel *The Death of Grass*, which explored themes of societal collapse due to ecological disaster and was later adapted into a film.
Christopher continued to gain acclaim with a series of apocalyptic novels, including *The Long Winter* and *A Wrinkle in the Skin*. He eventually focused on writing for young adults, creating popular series like *The Tripods Trilogy*, which tells of a rebellion against alien forces. Christopher’s works often reflect his skepticism towards technology and modern society, offering a nuanced examination of human behavior in crisis. His writing remains appreciated for its blend of imaginative storytelling and relatable characters facing extraordinary challenges.
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John Christopher
Author
- Born: February 12, 1922
- Birthplace: Lancashire, England
- Died: February 3, 2012
Biography
Christopher Samuel Youd, whose chief pen name, John Christopher, came from his little-used first name, was born on February 12, 1922, in Lancashire, England. He attended the Peter Symonds School in Winchester and left at the age of sixteen. Since the 1930’s, Christopher had been interested in all kinds of writing, including science fiction, and, like many other science fiction authors, he published his own amateur magazine. Christopher’s was called The Fantast. During World War II, from 1941 to 1946, he was in the Royal Signals Corps; upon demobilization, he married Joyce Fairbairn, with whom he had five children: Nicholas, Rose, Elizabeth, Sheila, and Margaret. In 1946, he obtained a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and also received the Atlantic Award in Literature, which was given to English writers whose work had been disrupted by the war. The result was The Winter Swan, a rare experimental work for Christopher in that it was narrated in reverse temporal order. However, this novel did not sell enough copies to allow Christopher to write full time, so he took a position in an information bureau, where he became an expert on the uses of industrial diamonds. By this time he had managed to sell stories to such United States science fiction magazines as Astounding and Galaxy, and he decided to adopt a different pen name for each genre he wrote in; he used John Christopher for science fiction. Upon his second science fiction novel’s rejection (a novel that later formed the basis for his The Prince in Waiting Trilogy), Christopher quickly wrote the novel that made him famous, The Death of Grass, about the collapse of civilization when a virus wipes out the world’s cereal crops. In the United States it was serialized in a leading mainstream magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and later made into a movie under its U.S. title, No Blade of Grass; the novel was runner-up in 1957 for the International Fantasy Award to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This success led to a series of novels centered on apocalyptic catastrophes: The Long Winter (1962) about a new Ice Age; A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965) about worldwide earthquakes; and Pendulum (1968) about the rule of England by ruthless teenagers after an economic collapse. Yet Christopher reached his goal of living solely on his writing income when he began writing young adult science fiction. His The Tripods Trilogy (The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, The Pool of Fire) charts a rebellion led by young men from England, France, and Germany against alien conquerors; a prequel, When the Tripods Came, was published twenty years later in 1988. His first marriage ended, and Christopher married Jessica Ball in 1980; she died in 2001. Two other significant young adult series by Christopher are The Prince in Waiting series, a post- apocalyptic variation of the Arthurian legends, and The Fireball series, in which two young heroes are catapulted by the title object into a parallel universe in which human society is still at the medieval stage. A self-described Tory anarchist, Christopher often displays a mistrust of technology and is especially critical of the ways in which modern communications further separate people at the human level. He even-handedly describes the attractions and dangers of life at the medieval level of community; his greatest achievement, whether at the adult or young-adult level, is the credibility with which he describes the behavior of believable human beings in extraordinary circumstances.