Sam Youd was a British writer best known for science fiction written under the name of John Christopher, including the novels The Death of Grass, The Possessors, and the young-adult novel series The Tripods. He won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976.
John Christopher
Christopher's novel The Year of the Comet saw its first U.S. publication in the August 1957 issue of Satellite Science Fiction
Christopher's novella "A World of Slaves" was the cover story on the March 1959 issue of Satellite Science Fiction
The Death of Grass is a 1956 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by the English author Sam Youd under the pen name John Christopher. The plot concerns a virus that kills off grass species, including rice and wheat. The Death of Grass was the first of several post-apocalyptic novels written by Youd. The novel was written in a matter of weeks and liberated him from his day job.
First edition