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>>14641633 <<< hmmm 33
cont: https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/an-early-dystopian-trilogy-about-resistance-and-what-comes-after
Dystopian fiction, as Jill Lepore recently chronicled in this magazine, goes back a ways, but the Tripods Trilogy was arguably the first example of that later, and now very familiar, subgenre, the young-adult dystopian series, and it anticipates all sorts of details and plot points from subsequent, better-known works. Its “capping” ceremony foreshadows similar puberty-triggered procedures forced on the kids in Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies” series, and in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Will must win a kind of teen Olympiad, à la “The Hunger Games,” in order to enter the City of Gold and Lead. And a game that aliens play inside their city, called Sphere Chase, seems close kin to Quidditch from the “Harry Potter” books, albeit minus the broomsticks.
Rereading the book today, though, what’s most striking is its ultimate lesson. At the end of the series, after our young heroes have defeated the Tripod rulers, Will notices troubling political developments: renewed tribalism, authoritarianism, and nationalism among some members of the resistance. Since the Presidential election last November, many people have drawn on dystopian fiction—“The Hunger Games,” in particular—to explain our predicament. The implication sometimes seems to be that we can restore democracy by rising up to defeat our newly elected leader, Katniss Everdeen-style. The Tripods Trilogy makes the case that sustaining democracy is not so simple.
Most of Youd’s books are out of print, but his literary estate, which is run by two of his children, has been working for the past few years to salvage them from oblivion with smart new editions. The most recent of these is the marvellous “The Possessors,” from 1964, a moody, creepy horror-thriller that’s of a Cold War piece with “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “The Thing from Another Planet.” Christopher’s best known work aimed at grownups is “The Death of Grass,” a 1956 novel that unfolds in a near-future, post-apocalyptic Great Britain after a virus kills off most of the plants on the planet. (It was made into a terrible, “Mystery Science Theater”-worthy film in 1970, called “No Blade of Grass” after the book’s title in the United States, where it was first published over several issues of the Saturday Evening Post.) Supplies becomes scarce, gangs become common, and might makes right becomes the law of the land—think “The Walking Dead” but with food shortages instead of zombies. Along with Christopher’s “The World in Winter,” from 1962—published as “The Long Winter” in the States—it deserves recognition as a key antecedent of climate fiction, or cli-fi, another of our new century’s more notable genres.
Still, Christopher’s legacy surely rests with his Y.A. fiction, the Tripods Trilogy most of all. And, while the books continue to be read (SYLE will be releasing a new U.K. paperback edition of “The White Mountains” in August), one significant obstacle to a broader cultural resurgence for the trilogy is the dearth of any characters of color and the near total lack of important female characters. Shortly after Christopher’s death, the journalist Torie Bosch described, for Slate, the experience of rereading the books as an adult and noticing, for the first time, their casual sexism and occasional racial insensitivity. Christopher mitigated this shortcoming, but only somewhat, in the series’ prequel, which includes several women, young and grown, among its main characters. The book concludes with Laurie, its male British hero, coming to realize that Hanna, a smart young woman new to his group, might make a great leader for the nascent resistance.
The need to sustain the struggle, even after apparent victory, is the note on which the trilogy concludes. “Are you ready for a new fight?” Will is asked by one of his friends. “A longer, less exciting one, with no great triumphs at the end?” Will agrees to stay connected with his friends and to fight, now, toward the never-ending goals of democracy and peace. The moral of Christopher’s story is that it’s only after monsters and Masters are defeated that the real hard work begins.