Customer Reviews

No Blade of Grass

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This was published in the USA as No Blade of Grass, but was originally published in the UK as The Death of Grass. An absolutely awful movie, titled No Blade of Grass, was made in the US and did not do well here, nor did it deserve to.

It was classed as juvenile fiction or Young Adult Sci Fi here in the US and was never considered a classic or a must-read. A few forward-thinking teachers once had it on their reading lists for teens or used it as an alternate in the middle school grades in the 170s and 80s, ie: the kids could choose between this and other, more mainstream fiction.

It is an excellent book, with a believable plot and chillingly accurate details; psycholgical profiles of most characters, for the most part, do not seem intusive, but naturally part of the narrative. These people and their thought proceeses and behaviors, given their circumstances, seem real and unforced.

Though, near the end, the rather broad strokes he paints a few characters with---notably the large, stodgy family who are hangers- on, not leaders and who are not cut out for this new world, where people survive by wit and skill---stand out badly in contrast to the rest. A little preachy there, I thought.

Why it is that this book has not been reprinted or made more easily available to all readers, regardless of age, I will never understand. I did read somewhere that the author, who writes here under the pseudonym of John Christopher, had stated, long after its first publishing in the UK, that he did not wish it to be reprinted (but as he does not own the full international copyright, I am not sure if that alone is enough to prevent it). The author's real name was Christopher Youd. [...]

Unlike On The Beach, which was published in the same vein and time period, it begins not with a devasting man-made accident, but an event completely natural and more realistic---a disease affects all the graminae--grass---plants.

Sounds simple, right? But as the disease organism naturally fights to survive, it mutates, as do many naturally occuring molds and viruses now. Man unintentionally worsens the advancing disease, as they interfere with and ultimately strengthen a strain they hadn't known existed, until its dormant version rears its ugly head.

It reminded me a bit of the current medical and scientific problems we face, one example being MRSA vs the current roster of antibiotics. If that nasty little bug ever gets out of control, we'll all need our own happy valley to retreat to.

The basic idea of this young adult story is really interesting. A mutant virus has appeared, but it only affects certain plants, not humans or animals. "Well, that doesn't sound so bad," you say? Wrong! The virus destroys all grasses and grains. This not only means brown lawns in the suburbs, but also leads to a total lack of food for cattle and other livestock. Furthermore, it entails a similarly utter lack of wheat and grain, for humans. Within a year, terrible famine spreads throughout the world. Civilization collapses. The few scared, skinny survivors who remain huddle together in isolated valleys, growing rare virus-resistant potatos for food, and fighting off bands of marauding scavengers.

The premise of this story is really intriguing and provocative. However, as usual, John Christopher is too preoccupied with creating extremely brutal, murderous, unnecessarily tough-guy characters. He did this in the Tripod Trilogy, he did it in "The Long Winter," and he does it again here. I personally think that characters like this seem to take up residence in a reader's unconscious mind. For literally years to come, they can provide a feeling of justification for all kinds of mean, evil behavior. Why not write about people who make things work out? Why not focus on the good? Or at least, why not write about the scientific elements of this virus, and a scientific struggle to cure it?

If you'd like to read some nonfiction about this kind of scenario, I'd like to recommend "Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization," by David Keys. That book is about similarly widespread famines, and struggles which the author believes may have taken place during the medieval period. Or, you might wish to read "The New Nuclear Danger," by Dr. Helen Caldicott. Anyway, "No Blade of Grass" is interesting in a way, but it has too much negativity. One thumb partly up.

I am a big fan of post apocolypse and alternative future fiction, and as this is a somewhat different type of disaster, I pounced on it with eager anticipation. The plot has been covered quite well by other writers here - death to all forms of grass and the chaos that ensues, so I won't add to this in any detail.

What I will voice is my disappointment in the book. What I like about this genre of fiction is that it tends to show people surviving under the worst conditions that can be thrown at them, and to a degree this is no different. However, what we do have in this story is a group of essentially decent people descending into barbarism, and whereas this is in all probability entirely what would happen, it doesn't necessarily make for an entertaining read. My preference is for the characters to step up to the unthinkable challenges and become better people in themselves.

Added to a relatively weak plot line, these unpleasant characters make for a disappointing novel. It is an interesting enough book, for its rarity and unusual take on the "end of the world as we know it", but it's definitely not among the best.