He also wrote The Prince in Waiting series, the Fireball series, and numerous standalones for children.īorn Apin Huyton, Lancaster, Lancashire, Youd attended Peter Symonds’ School in Winchester, Hampshire before serving in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941-46. He turned to children’s SF and fantasy with The White Mountains (1967), beginning the Tripods series, which also includes The City of Gold and Lead (1967), The Pool of Fire (1968), and prequel When the Tripods Came (1988). Other adult SF work includes The Long Winter (1962 as The World in Winter), Sweeney’s Island (1964 as Cloud and Silver in the UK), The Possessors (1965), A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965 as The Ragged Edge in the US, 1966), The Little People (1966), Pendulum (1968), and Bad Dream (2003). The Twenty-Second Century (1954) collected some of his SF stories, and his first true SF novel was The Year of the Comet (1955 in the US as Planet in Peril, 1959), all as John Christopher. His story “A Few Kindred Spirits” (1965), as John Christopher, was a Nebula finalist.įirst novel The Winter Swan (1949), as Christopher Youd, was fantasy, and he produced a number of non-SF works in the following years under various names. Youd, with first SF story “Christmas Tree” appearing as Christopher Youd in 1949. His first publication of genre interest was poem “Dreamer” in Weird Tales (1949) as C.S.

As Christopher he wrote the classic SF catastrophe novel The Death of Grass (1956 in the US as No Blade of Grass, 1957), and the YA trilogy Tripods, which began in 1967. Sam Youd, 89, better known by his pseudonym John Christopher, died Februin Bath England.

The Little People by John Christopher