John Christopher


Sam Youd, known professionally as Christopher Samuel Youd, was a British writer, best known for science fiction under the pseudonym John Christopher, including the novels The Death of Grass, The Possessors, and the young-adult novel series The Tripods. He won the Guardian Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976.
Youd also wrote under variations of his own name and under the pseudonyms Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Graaf, Peter Nichols, and Anthony Rye.

Biography

Sam Youd was born in Huyton, Lancashire. He adopted the name Christopher Samuel Youd for his professional writings, leading to the widespread but mistaken belief that that was his birth name. Throughout his life he was known simply as Sam to his friends and acquaintances.
Youd was educated at Peter Symonds' School in Winchester, Hampshire, then served in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941 to 1946. A scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible for him to pursue a writing career, beginning with The Winter Swan, published under the name Christopher Youd. He wrote science fiction short stories as John Christopher from 1951 and his first book under that name was a science fiction novel, Year of the Comet, published by Michael Joseph in 1955. John Christopher's second novel, The Death of Grass was Youd's first major success as a writer. It was published in the United States the following year as No Blade of Grass. An American magazine published Year of the Comet later that year and it was issued in 1959 as an Avon paperback entitled Planet in Peril. Youd continued to use the pen name John Christopher for the majority of his writing and all of his science fiction. The Death of Grass has been reissued many times, most recently in the Penguin Modern Classics.
In 1966 Youd started writing science fiction for adolescents, using the name John Christopher in every case. The Tripods trilogy, The Lotus Caves, The Guardians and the Sword of the Spirits trilogy were all well received. He won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Guardians. In 1976 he won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, youth fiction category, for the same novel in its German translation, Die Wächter.
In 1946 he married Joyce Fairbairn, with whom he had five children. He divorced in 1978, marrying Jessica Ball.
Youd lived for many years in Rye, East Sussex but died in Bath, Somerset, on 3 February 2012 of complications from bladder cancer.

Film and television adaptations

The Death of Grass was adapted as a film by Cornel Wilde under its American title, No Blade of Grass. The Tripods was partially developed into a British TV series. Empty World was developed into a 1987 TV movie in Germany, Leere Welt. The Guardians was made into a 1986 TV series in Germany, Die Wächter. The Lotus Caves was in development in 2007 as a film from Walden Media, to have been directed by Rpin Suwannath. Later, in 2013, a TV pilot based loosely on The Lotus Caves was developed by Bryan Fuller and titled High Moon. The pilot did not get picked up as a series, but was released on SyFy and Netflix in 2014.

John Christopher

Youd's first published story was "Dreamer" in the March 1941 Weird Tales, as C.S. Youd. He has had stories published in the magazines Astounding Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Worlds Beyond Science-Fantasy Fiction, New Worlds, Galaxy Science Fiction, SF Digest, Future Science Fiction, Space SF Digest, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Authentic Science Fiction, Space Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction, Fantastic Universe, Saturn Science Fiction, Orbit Science Fiction, Fantastic Story Magazine, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, Worlds of Science Fiction, Argosy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Beyond Infinity

Serializations

No Blade of Grass was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1957. Caves of Night was serialized in John Bull Magazine in 1958.

Anthologies