''The Death of Grass'' (US title ''No Blade of Grass'') is a 1956
post-apocalyptic science fiction
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astro ...
novel written by the English author
Sam Youd under the
pen name John Christopher. The plot concerns a
virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...
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.
It was published in the United States both in book form and serialized in ''
The Saturday Evening Post
''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely ...
'', as ''No Blade of Grass''; supposedly the US publisher thought the original title "sounded like something out of a gardening catalogue". Its publication in ''The Saturday Evening Post'' provoked considerable reaction amongst its readers on account of its portrayal of government's response to the unfolding worldwide crisis. The film rights were sold to
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
; the 1970 film, ''
No Blade of Grass'', was produced and directed by
Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde (born Kornél Lajos Weisz; October 13, 1912 – October 16, 1989) was a Hungarian-American actor and filmmaker.
Wilde's acting career began in 1935, when he made his debut on Broadway. In 1936 he began making small, uncredited app ...
.
Plot
A new virus strain has infected rice crops in
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both Geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The modern State (polity), states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. ...
causing massive famine; the virus is also revealed to be found in the UK but because of its selectivity does not affect the country's agriculture. After the introduction of a new pesticide, developed in preference to breeding resistant crops, a mutated virus appears and infects the staple crops of West Asia and Europe such as wheat and barley—all of the
grass
Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...
es (thus the novel's title). It threatens a famine engulfing the whole of the
Old World, while
Australasia
Australasia is a region that comprises Australia, New Zealand and some neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically, physiogeographically, philologically, and ecologi ...
and the Americas attempt to impose rigorous quarantine to keep the virus out.
The novel follows the struggles of engineer John Custance and his friend, civil servant Roger Buckley, as, along with their families, they make their way across an England which is rapidly descending into
anarchy, hoping to reach the safety of John's brother's potato farm in an isolated
Westmorland
Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...
valley. Buckley, having advance warning of the government's plot to
hydrogen bomb major cities, alerts Custance to evacuate. Picking up a travelling companion in a gun shop owner named Pirrie after an attempt to procure arms, they find they must sacrifice many of their morals in order to stay alive. At one point, when their food supply runs out, they kill a family to take their bread. The protagonist justifies this with the belief that "it was them or us."
By the time they reach the valley, they have accumulated a considerable entourage as a result of their encounters with other groups of survivors along the way. They find that John's brother is unable to let them all in to the heavily defended valley. Pirrie prevents John from taking only his immediate family into the valley; instead, the group takes the valley by force. Pirrie and John's brother are killed; John takes possession of the valley.
Adaptations
A dramatised version was broadcast on BBC radio in the late 1950s.
A film adaptation, ''
No Blade of Grass'' (1970), was produced and directed by
Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde (born Kornél Lajos Weisz; October 13, 1912 – October 16, 1989) was a Hungarian-American actor and filmmaker.
Wilde's acting career began in 1935, when he made his debut on Broadway. In 1936 he began making small, uncredited app ...
.
In 2009, as part of a
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
science fiction season, the station broadcast a drama in five episodes, based on the novel and narrated by
David Mitchell.
In popular culture
In the 2017 television series
''Feud'',
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway theatre, Broadway. Crawford was si ...
(played by
Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange (; born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. She is the 13th actress to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with a Screen Actors ...
) is portrayed rejecting the book as a possible movie source.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Death Of Grass, The
1956 British novels
1956 science fiction novels
British science fiction novels
British post-apocalyptic novels
Books about famine
Novels by John Christopher
Works published under a pseudonym
Novels about viral outbreaks
British novels adapted into films
Michael Joseph books