Product Description

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brotherÂ’s farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3255 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
'The Death of Grass sticks with commendable perseverance to the surface of the earth we know... John Christopher has constructed an unusually dramatic and exciting tale' Daily Mail 'I know and admire The Death of Grass. It was published at roughly the same time as The Day Of The Triffids. In my judgement, it is by far the better book. The characterisation is better and the mood uniformly cold. It is a thrilling and sensible work' - Brian Aldiss 'Gripping ! of all science fiction's apocalypses, this is one of the most haunting' Financial Times

About the Author
John Christopher (pen name of Sam Youd) was born in 1922 in Liverpool. His novels were popular during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably The Death Of Grass. In 1966 he started writing science-fiction for adolescents. The Tripods trilogy, the Prince in Waiting trilogy (also known as the Sword of the Spirits trilogy) and the Lotus Caves are still widely read today. Robert Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind (2003), which won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Wild Places (2007), which won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.

Customer Reviews

When the world's food crops have died ..........
...... do we revert to the Year Zero of the Pol Pot era in Cambodia? This novel is perhaps one of the best treatments of the ecological disaster theme, written with both intelligence and a clear understanding of the human condition when faced with life-threatening circumstances.

The storyline starts out with the news that a deadly, resilient plant virus known as the Chung-Li virus has virtually wiped all cereal crops, including rice, in China. Due to an initial Chinese government decision to suppress details of the ensuing famine, the full scale of the disaster is not made known until it is quite too late. Vaccine developed hastily by Western countries proves ultimately to be ineffective and before long, the virus has rapidly spread, reaching Europe including England and wiping out all the cereal crops (with the exception of potatoes) and grass of that particular region. Life in England starts breaking down with catastrophic consequences and the story then focuses on the attempts of the protagonist John Custance, his family and close friends, to reach safety in northern England where his brother has a farm newly set up for potato farming.

Initially the reader may gain the impression of the novel being a THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS clone but as the story progresses, it is clear that this is not the case. Whereas John Wyndham attempted to portray English middle-class values as being the best defence against total societal breakdown, John Christopher provides no such assurances. The transformation of Custance from comfortably middle-class Londoner through a deterioration of personality to that of a feudal clan chieftain is indeed very disturbing and the atmosphere throughout the novel is one of constant potential violence as people prepare to wage war on one another .... for a scrap of food. The depiction(s) of Custance's right-hand man, Harold Pirrie, as an expert rifle marksman and a cold, calculating killer are chilling in the extreme. Add to that, the summary justice meted out by Custance and his followers to a gang of marauders who kidnap and rape Custance's wife and young daughter and the cold-blooded shooting of an unfortunate family seeking to defend their household and you have a novel of quite brutal savagery. Very rarely throughout the book is any chance of salvation offered and the novel's conclusion I found to be shockingly nihilistic. With scant details provided of the Chung-Li virus and the news of the Chinese famine provided at second-hand, the novel is very much a study of mankind's primal instincts and the lengths individuals will go to preserve their very existence.

Every sci-fi reader should read this book. The novel is a subdued warning against complacency and the possible consequences of such complacency. This is very much relevant in today's world of GM-modified foods and resistant strains of disease culture. If such a scenario unfolded in present-day Western society, then all I can say is ...... God help the lot of us.

An excellent and shocking piece of work
I've been wanting to read this for ages, so jumped at the chance to buy it now it's been reprinted. I read it in an afternoon and was not disappointed. If anyone's intending to buy it then don't whatever you do read the introduction, which is so laden with spoilers that it was the only thing that reduced my enjoyment of the whole thing in any way.

I've read in many places, including one of the other reviews here, comparisons with The Day of the Triffids, saying that this is much more realistic and that TDOTT is all stiff upper lips and cosy catastrophe. I find this a little unfair because Wyndham's work is set in a world where there are almost no survivors, and as such bears little comparison with the disaster unfolding here. Indeed, Wyndham's main character explicitly realises at one point in TDOTT how different (and bloody) things would be if 10 or 15 per cent of the population had survived, so he has that base covered. Rather than comparisons with TDOTT, which must come more from the fact that both books come from the same era than from anything else, this book made me think more than anything else of a prequel to Cormac McCarthy's deeply disturbing The Road.

In short TDOG is excellent, but has not toppled TDOTT from my Number One for this type of fiction.

Chung-Li in the 70s.... GM today?
I think John Christopher was ahead of his time with this story. The story centres around the end of all the world's grasses and what happens specifically to a small English group trying to get to a safe haven. The social dynamic is fascinating and I see mirrors of this in much later books possibly not quite as well done. The What If scenario keeps me coming back to read this over and over again. Would I do as well in the same situation? I hope so. This book cries out to be turned into a well made film but obviously brought up to date inm a sympathetic manner. I'd love to see this and his other books brought up to date - I'd definitely go for them.