Rating: 
Summary: A story that stays with you, gentle on your mind, for years
Review: It's been years since I read "No Blade of Grass." It's a story that should not go out of print, but has. It has the same haunting quality as "On The Beach," or "Alas Babylon." They depicted a world following a nuclear war, with differing results. This story uses a grass blight to achieve basically the same result, a world-wide disaster that presages the end of civilization as we know it. The story itself takes place in England, and portrays the events following the destruction of all grass species by disease, including grains, with the resultant loss of grazing animals and looming human starvation. The main story is the human reactions that follow--how the characters cope with the situation, and how they react and are changed by the anarchy that results. The story promotes thought about how much we rely on external controls in our daily life, and the necessity of individual internal control in our everyday struggle for existence, especially in such dramatic life-threatening situations. A good book, if you can find a copy. Joseph Pierre
Rating:
Summary: A story that stays with you, gentle on your mind, for years
Review:
It's been years since I read "No Blade of Grass." It's a story that should not go out of print, but has. It has the same haunting quality as "On The Beach," or "Alas Babylon." They depicted a world following a nuclear war, with differing results. This story uses a grass blight to achieve basically the same result, a world-wide disaster that presages the end of civilization as we know it. The story itself takes place in England, and portrays the events following the destruction of all grass species by disease, including grains, with the resultant loss of grazing animals and looming human starvation. The main story is the human reactions that follow--how the characters cope with the situation, and how they react and are changed by the anarchy that results. The story promotes thought about how much we rely on external controls in our daily life, and the necessity of individual internal control in our everyday struggle for existence, especially in such dramatic life-threatening situations. A good book, if you can find a copy. Joseph Pierre
Rating: 
Summary: A Powerful Study Of The End Of The World
Review: A chilling study of the start of a new Dark Ages, written in a John Wyndham style. John Christopher's excellent novel charts the fall of the human race into barbarism after a disease wipes out all grass crops. Powerful and unfortunately all too believable. Track down this book and read - it will haunt you for ages after.
Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Study Of The End Of The World
Review: A chilling study of the start of a new Dark Ages, written in a John Wyndham style. John Christopher's excellent novel charts the fall of the human race into barbarism after a disease wipes out all grass crops. Powerful and unfortunately all too believable. Track down this book and read - it will haunt you for ages after.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good post-apocolyptic novel.
Review: Christopher has done a good job with this format of science fiction. This novel rates up there with Lucifer's Hammer by Niven. Although it is out of print, try to find it. You'll be glad you did. By the way, could it happen? Hmmm.....
Rating: 
Summary: This could have been a great book, but....
Review: Most apocalyptic novels are marked by spectacular explosions, loathesome invaders, or the like. This one is not. Instead, in a very believable scenario, a rice virus develops in China, and the Chinese government tries to keep it secret. However, when the great famine develops, the UN comes up with an isotope that stops it. But the cure is worse than the disease, for this allows an all encompassing grass virus to come out of hiding.
What follows is a civilization ending virus that kills all grasses, including all food grains. So, in one swoop, livestock and grain are gone. The Eastern hemisphere descends into famine and cannibalism. In England, the site of the story, the government decides to use H-Bombs on the cities to alleviate the famine. All well and good, and frighteningly believable. But what isn't at all credible, and what detracts from the book is the tale of a few people who go into a small, secluded English valley to live on potatoes and root crops. Except for a brief foray, the group faces no meaningful attack, and the book ends with the Western Hemisphere intact, and the valley's few survivors planning to build new cities. The ending is a sop to the desire to give some hope where none would exist. Personally, I much prefer George Stewart's much more honest approach in "Earth Abides."
Rating:
Summary: This could have been a great book, but....
Review: Most apocalyptic novels are marked by spectacular explosions, loathesome invaders, or the like. This one is not. Instead, in a very believable scenario, a rice virus develops in China, and the Chinese government tries to keep it secret. However, when the great famine develops, the UN comes up with an isotope that stops it. But the cure is worse than the disease, for this allows an all encompassing grass virus to come out of hiding. What follows is a civilization ending virus that kills all grasses, including all food grains. So, in one swoop, livestock and grain are gone. The Eastern hemisphere descends into famine and cannibalism. In England, the site of the story, the government decides to use H-Bombs on the cities to alleviate the famine. All well and good, and frighteningly believable. But what isn't at all credible, and what detracts from the book is the tale of a few people who go into a small, secluded English valley to live on potatoes and root crops. Except for a brief foray, the group faces no meaningful attack, and the book ends with the Western Hemisphere intact, and the valley's few survivors planning to build new cities. The ending is a sop to the desire to give some hope where none would exist. Personally, I much prefer George Stewart's much more honest approach in "Earth Abides."
Rating:
Summary: No Blade of Grass--Going Against the Grain
Review: NBOG has always been one of my favorite apcoalypse books, combining a fast moving plot with well defined characters and thought-provoking questions.
Like most post-apocalyptic novels, No Blade of Grass ostensibly focuses on the effects of, in this case, an ecological holocaust, on the lives of a small band of survivors in post-apocalypse Britain. The tale turns on what these survivors must do to reach "safety" on a small farm in a protected valley far from urban centers. In this, the book differs quite dramatically from much of the rest of this genre. Rather than dwelling on the problems faced when the world's population is decimated, NBOG poses the much more interesting question: What happens when most of the food supply is destroyed while most of the population remains? Christopher's answers will provoke, even anger you. But, whatever your response, the situations he poses must be taken seriously. This is a book well worth reading together with Earth Abides or Lucifer's Hammer. Though both books take the more conventional route of killing off 99% of the world's population (the first by disease the second by a meteor), they deal with similar questions regarding civilization yet come to different answers. For my money, while NBOG's answers are the most distasteful, they are also the most realistic.
Rating:
Summary: A Believable Ecological Disaster
Review: No Blade of Grass is even more timely today than when it was written. The plotline is familiar. It shows a very dark view of ordinary people trying to cope with the end of the world. That is well-done but it is the fact that the collapse of civilization is not from nuclear war or such but from a simple virus. The virus kills all members of the grass family. When you consider how many major food crops would be affected and then the domino effect of the loss of feed for animals, you are reminded of how truly vulnerable life on earth is and how easily the balance can be upset. I don't know if John Christopher was being prophetic or simply wanted a different sort of disaster for background, but with today's concerns about viruses, the book is chillingly real.
Rating:
Summary: A Believable Ecological Disaster
Review: No Blade of Grass is even more timely today than when it was written. The plotline is familiar. It shows a very dark view of ordinary people trying to cope with the end of the world. That is well-done but it is the fact that the collapse of civilization is not from nuclear war or such but from a simple virus. The virus kills all members of the grass family. When you consider how many major food crops would be affected and then the domino effect of the loss of feed for animals, you are reminded of how truly vulnerable life on earth is and how easily the balance can be upset. I don't know if John Christopher was being prophetic or simply wanted a different sort of disaster for background, but with today's concerns about viruses, the book is chillingly real.
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