John Christopher
| John Christopher | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Sam Youd 16 April 1922 Huyton, Lancashire, England, UK |
| Died | 3 February 2012 (aged 89) Bath, Somerset, England, UK |
| Pen name | Christopher Samuel Youd (professional nonfiction), John Christopher (science fiction), and several others |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Peter Symonds College |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards |
Guardian Prize 1971 |
Sam Youd (16 April 1922 – 3 February 2012), known professionally as Christopher Samuel Youd, was a British writer, best known for science fiction under the pseudonym John Christopher, including the novels The Death of Grass, The Possessors, and the young-adult novel series The Tripods. He won the Guardian Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976.
Youd also wrote under variations of his own name and under the pseudonyms Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Graaf, Peter Nichols, and Anthony Rye.
Sam Youd was born in Huyton, Lancashire (though Youd is an old Cheshire surname). He adopted the name Christopher Samuel Youd for his professional writings, leading to the widespread but mistaken belief that that was his birth name. Throughout his life he was known simply as Sam to his friends and acquaintances.
Youd was educated at Peter Symonds' School in Winchester, Hampshire, then served in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941 to 1946. A scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible for him to pursue a writing career, beginning with The Winter Swan (Dennis Dobson, 1949), published under the name Christopher Youd. He wrote science fiction short stories as John Christopher from 1951 and his first book under that name was a science fiction novel, Year of the Comet, published by Michael Joseph in 1955. John Christopher's second novel, The Death of Grass (Michael Joseph, 1956) was Youd's first major success as a writer. It was published in the United States the following year as No Blade of Grass (Simon & Schuster, 1957). An American magazine published Year of the Comet later that year and it was issued in 1959 as an Avon paperback entitled Planet in Peril. Youd continued to use the pen name John Christopher for the majority of his writing and all of his science fiction .The Death of Grass has been reissued many times, most recently in the Penguin Modern Classics (2009).
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