Sam Youd as John Christopher

SYLE Publications

Cloud on Silver

A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island…
Messages of Love

‘So, you have married these two beautiful young ladies,’ General Tulenkov remarks to Lionel Sickert and his friend John Burchall, ‘and taken them from the shores of sparkling Leman to the dark Lancashire wastes. Love is more powerful than one commonly thinks.’
The Gull’s Kiss

To his employers, he was a first-rate engineer. To his friends, he was something of a Don Juan. A more perceptive acquaintance described him as possessed of ‘a kind of bitter integrity’ … But beneath the front, the real Charles Hibson lay buried – deep.
The World in Winter

The Fratellini Winter they had called it, after the Italian scientist who had first detected the decline in solar radiation. The seasons pass and the cold bites ever harder. The Thames freezes over, stocks of food and fuel run low, and London falls under martial law. That first arctic winter, it seems, was only …
A Palace of Strangers

‘It is always nonsense for us that says some are chosen and others left to die. If that should be, it is better not to be chosen.’
‘You mean, we’re all chosen.’
‘No,’ Dadda said. ‘I mean, we are all left to die.’
A Wrinkle in the Skin

One night, the island of Guernsey convulsed. As shock followed shock, the landscape tilted violently in defiance of gravity. When dawn came and the quakes had stilled to tremblings, Matthew Cotter gazed out in disbelief at the pile of rubble that had been his home…
The Winter Swan

In 1949, Sam Youd – who would later go on, as John Christopher, to write The Death of Grass and The Tripods – published his first novel. As he later said:
I knew first novels tended to be autobiographical and was determined to avoid that. So my main character was a woman …
The Possessors

When the storm rages and the avalanche cuts off power and phone lines, no one in the chalet is particularly bothered. There are kerosene lamps, a well-stocked bar and food supplies more than adequate to last them till the road to Nidenhaut can be opened up…
The Death of Grass

The Chung-Li virus has devastated Asia, wiping out the rice crop and leaving riots and mass starvation in its wake. The rest of the world looks on with concern, though safe in the expectation that a counter-virus will be developed any day. Then Chung-Li mutates and spreads…
The Caves of Night

Five people enter the Frohnberg caves, three men and two women. In the glare of the Austrian sunshine, the cool underground depths seem an attractive proposition – until the collapse of a cave wall blocks their return to the outside world. Faced with an unexplored warren of tunnels and caves …
Cloud on Silver

A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island…
Messages of Love

‘So, you have married these two beautiful young ladies,’ General Tulenkov remarks to Lionel Sickert and his friend John Burchall, ‘and taken them from the shores of sparkling Leman to the dark Lancashire wastes. Love is more powerful than one commonly thinks.’

Latest Posts

15 Apr, 2023

Sam Youd (and Peter Graaf) discounted (or free) on kindle this weekend

Sam Youd (aka John Christopher, aka William Godfrey, aka Hilary Ford, aka Stanley Winchester, aka Peter Graaf, aka Anthony Rye, aka Peter Nichols) was born on 16th April 1922. To celebrate his 101th anniversary, this...

Babel Itself / Sam Youd

12 Apr, 2023

Sam Youd at 101

Better known as John Christopher, author of The Death of Grass and The Tripods tetralogy, Sam Youd started his career writing straight (aka ‘literary’) fiction, very different in tone from the dystopian and genre novels...

John Christopher / Messages of Love

25 Dec, 2022

When night’s shadows fall

Usually Peppi had guests for Christmas, and so he would come to visit them, knowing they would not come to him. They would hear, if it were fine enough for them to be out in...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

8 Oct, 2022

I thought every day there would be bad news

‘You have to go back. Tomorrow.’ ‘It probably won’t be so bad. In fact, I’m sure it won’t. This last thing shook my confidence, but I’m all right again now.’ She said, ‘When you first...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

18 Aug, 2022

The immunity which had been his

He said, ‘Your appetites coarsen – whisky’s only a part of it.’ ‘Is it?’ Katharine asked. She smiled, but there was a small ring of steel in her voice. ‘What other appetites, then?’ He missed...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

11 Aug, 2022

Outside that mesh

You’re thirty-three.’ ‘It’s a ripe age.’ Her eyes appealed to him. ‘If you’d been like John, a family man, it would have been different. You wouldn’t have thought you had to go.’ ‘That’s not true....

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

2 Aug, 2022

All the rest are shadows

‘Everything in order,’ he told her. ‘I’m to report in ten days’ time.’ ‘You’re cracked,’ Wilf said. He was breathing heavily, nervously. ‘For God’s sake, Vicky, how did you come to let him do a...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

16 Jul, 2022

A samurai of commerce

‘Your husband is a great man, Vicky,’ Tulenkov said. ‘He is a samurai of commerce. I would like to take him back with me to Russia. We could learn from him.’ ‘Some day,’ Lionel said,...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

8 Jul, 2022

You have had your supper

‘The birds will have gone to roost,’ Lionel said. From the pocket of his overcoat, Tulenkov took the bag into which, on their way out, he had put cakes from the stand. ‘They will wake...

Messages of Love / Sam Youd

5 Jul, 2022

He’ll kill himself on that machine sooner or later

‘We’re very fond of Wilf.’ ‘I can’t think why! He has no conversation, and even less appearance. That suit, that dreadful tie, those boots! And that washable collar.’ ‘You make him nervous,’ Victoria said. ‘Most...