Authorgraph – interview with John Christopher Long-established children’s book magazine, ‘Books for Keeps’, interviews Sam Youd: ‘I think the successful children’s books are those which appeal to something at a deeper level which the child...
‘Retreat is not an option!’ Digital artist Damian Mark Whittle explains how ‘Death of Grass’ bridges the gap ‘between the “cosy catastrophes” of Wyndham and the dystopian modernity of Ballard … In some respects, the...
The Drop In the far future, humanity has expanded out to explore the outer reaches of the solar system, leaving behind the radioactively poisoned planet once known as Earth, now more commonly referred to as...
A man of many pseudonyms If the name John Christopher is not familiar, try Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Graaf, Anthony Rye or his birth-name, Sam Youd. Was there ever an...
Sam Youd was born in Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.
As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: ‘In the early thirties,’ he later wrote, ‘we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.’
Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies …
Five people enter the Frohnberg caves, three men and two women. In the glare of the Austrian sunshine, the cool underground depths seem an attractive proposition – until the collapse of a cave wall blocks their return to the outside world. Faced with an unexplored warren of tunnels and caves …
A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island…
I had forgotten what good stories he told, as well: long and involved but so engrossing that I never wanted them to stop. This was one of my favourites, about a dog we had lost...
The day-bed had been set up with its head against the wall, between the two high windows. Sir Donald lay with cushions propping him; beyond his bed on one side he could see his leather-topped...
Something touched my face. I was aware of light through my eyelids but would not open my eyes for fear of what I should see. A hand was lifting me. I could visualize it –...
