Empty World, by John Christopher

I bought this book a few years back, at a church bring-and-buy sale. I was expecting a rather gentle book, but the fact that he also wrote The Tripods made me not quite so sure of this. John Christopher is actually a pseudonym for a certain Samuel Youd, who has written 70 novels under 7 names. This particular book was written in 1977.

The story begins with an orphan, Neil Miller living with his grandparents, going to school, albeit unhappily. The news on the TV at night starts to talk about a new disease called the Calcutta Plague which spreads quickly over the Asian continent. It bears a startling resemblance to the SARS epidemic of 2003. It kills the weakest first, the old. As the epidemic goes on, younger and younger people die, eventually leaving a world populated only by young people, teenagers.

Bodies lie in fields and in streets, because there is no-one responsible left to deal with them. Hordes of dogs rove the streets, eating what they can find. The entire system of society breaks down, no petrol stations, no schools, no fire brigade.

As with many of Christopher's novels, this book deals with the peculiar position of adolescents in society, and the transition between innocence and responsibility. It details the break-down in society, but also in people. Neil runs into a young man called Clive who claims to be gentry, living in his parents' house, but turns out to be a psychotic thief, driven mad by the isolation of the world he now finds himself in, and clamps onto Neil.

Neil is forced to accept new responsibilities. He finds himself as a surrogate parent to two dying children. He has to find food for them, keep them safe from the dogs and the other people wandering the barren country looking for any way to advantage themselves in a sudden competitive struggle for survival. When the disease kills them, he has to dig their graves.

This book is a rite-of-passage story, but not by any means a normal one. In some places it is quite disturbing, and leaves you imagining your own actions in an empty world like Neil's, how you would go about forging an existence, bringing about the rebirth of human civilisation and, most difficult of all, staying sane.

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