London, Joseph, 1956
New York, Simon and Schuster, 1957 (as No Blade of Grass)
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Book Details:Hardback edition published by Michael Joseph Limited, London, 1956. First Edition. Sleeve notes:The title of this ‘Novel of Tomorrow’ gives a pretty clear idea of the plot: but it gives no hint of the exciting quality of the story, nor of its originality. For it is original to forego all the well-tried familiar science-fiction properties- Space-Travel, Time-Travel, Super Gadgets and Super-men, and be content with England’s green and pleasant land. It is original for an author to open his story leisurely, with such loving detail; to give the reader ample time to know and like the characters; to remember how beautiful England is; to hold back so skillfully and for so long his author’s knowledge of the horrors to come. But the trick makes the book. The reader is invited, as it were, to come for a gay sleigh-ride with the characters: and, as the party glides off, the slope is so gentle that the sleigh scarcely seems to move. But already, to the right and left, the look of the land is changing, and all of a sudden the reader finds himself breathless with excitement, racing down a dangerous hill at top speed, escaping danger and disaster at every turn and curve. And it is not only the landscape which alters. The characters reshape themselves under the reader’s eyes and not until the final moment of the wild adventure does he know whether the end will be total wreck or a safe slowing down in a land where the grass once more grows green and pleasant. Book Source:Colin Brockhurst |
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Book Details:Paperback edition published by Penguin Books, London, 1970. Sleeve notes:A terrifying fantasy which invites comparison with the novels of John Wyndham. A new virus appears in China: it kills grass. Millions die of hunger. The West is alarmed: bread rationing may be needed. But few people forsee the desperate fight for survival, the panic, and the lapse into barbarism that are to come ... Book Source:Terry Jenkins |
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Book Details:Paperback edition published by Sphere, London 1978. Sleeve notes:The Chung-Li virus destroyed all types of grass. Including rice, wheat, oats, barley - all the grain bearing plants on which the world depended for its basic foodstuffs. Millions died of starvation. Millions more died in the violent upheavals that this, the ultimate famine, brought in its wake. But there were people caught up in the nightmare who were determined to survive whatever the cost to their 'civilised' values - values which were now as out of place as a dinner jacket in a slaughterhouse in any case . . . John Christopher's classic bestselling novel of a group of men and women fighting their way across a devastated landscape through rape, slaughter and pillage to a grim sanctuary is a relentlessly gripping story of survival against all odds in a world that has become a brutal hell on earth. Book Source:Terry Jenkins |
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Book Details:Hardback edition published by Michael Joseph Limited, London, 1973. Sleeve notes:The Death Of Grass recounts the terrifying changes on the face of the earth when the balance of nature is upset - and it takes place not at some unspecified date in the future, but in the present. The characters are pleasant, middle-class people who live serenely until the grass begins to die - upon which their personalities begin to change. Life in England becomes a struggle for survival and following their fortunes the reader becomes personally involved. Book Source:Solihull Libraries |
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Book Details:Paperback edition published by Penguin, London 1963. Sleeve notes:Unknown Book Source:Colin Brockhurst |
