Science Fiction classic. From the back of the book: It began simply enough when an Asiatic virus destroyed the grass and grain supply of the entire world. A mass slaughter began as nations murdered their own citizens so that some might live. And then there came a time when every man lived for himself without laws or morals. It was then that there was no hope for civilization, because there was NO BLADE OF GRASS.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Blade of Grass--Going Against the Grain,
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This review is from: No Blade of Grass (Paperback)
NBOG has always been one of my favorite apcoalypse books, combining a fast moving plot with well defined characters and thought-provoking questions. Like most post-apocalyptic novels, No Blade of Grass ostensibly focuses on the effects of, in this case, an ecological holocaust, on the lives of a small band of survivors in post-apocalypse Britain. The tale turns on what these survivors must do to reach "safety" on a small farm in a protected valley far from urban centers. In this, the book differs quite dramatically from much of the rest of this genre. Rather than dwelling on the problems faced when the world's population is decimated, NBOG poses the much more interesting question: What happens when most of the food supply is destroyed while most of the population remains? Christopher's answers will provoke, even anger you. But, whatever your response, the situations he poses must be taken seriously. This is a book well worth reading together with Earth Abides or Lucifer's Hammer. Though both books take the more conventional route of killing off 99% of the world's population (the first by disease the second by a meteor), they deal with similar questions regarding civilization yet come to different answers. For my money, while NBOG's answers are the most distasteful, they are also the most realistic.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When there's nothing to eat but Each Other.,
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This review is from: No Blade of Grass (Paperback)
John Christopher writes some pretty gripping science fiction novels about alien invasions (The Tripod trilogy) catastrophic shifts in the earth's weather (The Long Winter) and terrifying tales of the savagery that humans revert to when civilization breaks down (A Wrinkle In The Skin)-- potent stuff indeed. His books share with JG BALLARD a fascination for post-apocalyptic settings but are really psychological character studies about how people change to fit their environments. This book is perhaps Christopher at his starkest and most frightening. A man simply tries to take his family safely out of London to his brother's farm in the North after a genetically engineered bio-weapon gets out of control and wipes out the world's food supply, causing anarchy and chaos to erupt all over the globe.It is interesting to note that on the page the protagonist's actions and "him or me" ethos seem to make much more sense than they do in Cornel Wilde's gonzo 1970 film adaptaion, where the main character comes off as much more trigger-happy and casually lethal & ruthless than in the novel; one might say its only a matter of degree once the civilized world has crumbled but that doesn't make it any more palatable. Sounds like a bad review, doesn't it? On the contrary, today almost all of John Christopher's nightmare scenarios seem only a few CNN headlines away...and thus more compelling than ever.
24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This could have been a great book, but....,
By
This review is from: No Blade of Grass (Paperback)
Most apocalyptic novels are marked by spectacular explosions, loathesome invaders, or the like. This one is not. Instead, in a very believable scenario, a rice virus develops in China, and the Chinese government tries to keep it secret. However, when the great famine develops, the UN comes up with an isotope that stops it. But the cure is worse than the disease, for this allows an all encompassing grass virus to come out of hiding.What follows is a civilization ending virus that kills all grasses, including all food grains. So, in one swoop, livestock and grain are gone. The Eastern hemisphere descends into famine and cannibalism. In England, the site of the story, the government decides to use H-Bombs on the cities to alleviate the famine. All well and good, and frighteningly believable. But what isn't at all credible, and what detracts from the book is the tale of a few people who go into a small, secluded English valley to live on potatoes and root crops. Except for a brief foray, the group faces no meaningful attack, and the book ends with the Western Hemisphere intact, and the valley's few survivors planning to build new cities. The ending is a sop to the desire to give some hope where none would exist. Personally, I much prefer George Stewart's much more honest approach in "Earth Abides."
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