BOOk review: empty world by john christopher

I’ve long admired the SF novels by British author John Christopher (Sam Youd), and have posted about his works such as The Tripods trilogy and the Sword of the Spirits series, with the former in particular having been an influence on my novel The Map of the Known World. Christopher’s Death of Grass is also an excellent post-apocalyptic novel, one that is rightly lauded and which felt eerily resonant with the onset of Covid-19 in 2020.

I recently read another of Christopher’s post-apocalyptic books, Empty World. A short novel, at around 134 pages, it follows fifteen‑year‑old Neil Miller, a survivor of the catastrophic Calcutta Plague. The story begins with Neil losing his parents in a car accident. As Neil struggles to adapt to this tragedy, the whole world is devastated when the Plague swiftly wipes out the adult population, including his grandparents, with whom he has lived with since the death of his parents.
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Although clearly published for young adults, Empty World does not soft-peddle and is often an unsettling read, with a bleak, unflinching atmosphere, establishing a bleak world of silent streets, abandoned homes, and the threat of rats and feral dogs, all punctuated with moments of fear and sadness. For example, the fate of Tommy and Susie, two young children Neil tries to help, is both brutal and movingly told.    

Empty World by John Christopher

The inexorable spread of the Plague, and the rapid societal collapse it causes, feels horribly plausible, given weight and power by Christopher’s taut writing and chilling imagery.

Empty World perhaps works best as a character study, as Neil, already numbed by unimaginable loss and trauma, is forced to confront the disintegration of civilisation and the psychological torment of isolation. His struggle to survive and to find other survivors is quietly but vividly portrayed – when Neil reaches a desolate London, he finds all the material resources he could ever need to survive, but as one shocking encounter with an unfortunate survivor who believed himself utterly alone, the greatest danger, the biggest threat of all, is loss of human connection. When Neil does meet other survivors, their interactions are riven with suspicion and fear – this is a new world, without order, without rules, with the ever-present threat of violence, and who, if anyone, can you trust?

As he is forced to both battle for survival and face his own trauma, Neil is morally conflicted, and this is brought into sharp focus in the novel’s very last pages, which I won’t spoil here.

Empty World is a brief but impactful science fiction novel, a layered exploration of grief, loneliness and human relationships.
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If you’re interested in finding out more about John Christopher / Sam Youd, it is well worth visiting the Syle Press website, which is packed with information and resources about the author and his books.