The Tripods Trilogy

John Christopher wrote two of my favourite books – The Death of Grass and The World in Winter. It was re-reading the first of these earlier this year that made me go looking for more by him, and since the title that kept cropping up when I did was The Tripods Trilogy, I thought I’d try that.

How strange to read a well-respected - beloved even - trilogy more than fifty years after it was published. Were this series to be written today, then its tale of teenagers fighting back against a race of alien creatures bent on transforming the Earth into a poisonous planet habitable for them would definitely be something else.

I’m not knocking the three as a story. The pace is brisk. The settings are striking. The characters are believably uneven: brave but hesitant, jealous but loyal, impetuous but also steadfast. And while the books are written for young readers, the often ruthless intelligence that shines through the two adult books I mentioned keeps cropping up here. It’s most definitely not a black-and-white world. Beating the aliens demands patience, brains and sacrifice.

But you can’t help noticing now (in 2022) what a different time the books were written in. The language is a little stiff and staid. Formal even. The characters are all  male and all white. There’s only one female who contributes anything to events and she really only exists to be pretty and alluring. (Although, given that aforementioned ruthless intelligence, her fate fits her role and is deeply, memorably unsettling.) Adventure was for boys, and girls were there to be pretty.

Here's the thing though. You could easily update the books. You could mix up the gender and race of the characters – you could even make the alluring princess a prince – and the stories would work just as well. Those you wouldn’t have to change at all. And were John Christopher alive today to do so, I'm sure he would without a second's hesitation. He was too intelligent not to.