Begin the beguine

So, until I bought the boxed set of John Christopher's Tripod Trilogy, I had no idea he'd written a prequel 20 years after the original trilogy was released.

Which brings us to When The Tripods Came. The plot is fairly straight forward, as we meet Laurie and Andy, off camping on the moors when the first Tripod appears in England. Three arrived at the same time, one in England, one in Russia, and one in Montana. While the American tripod self destructs, the other two are defeated by the military of the respective nations.

Much fun is made of our first extraterrestrial encounter, as they really didn't do much besides die. Indeed, a new show about the tripods hits the televisions a few months after, seemingly poking fun at the alien objects. And then people get really obsessed with the show. Laurie watches one episode, and notices how realistic some of it seems to be. His sister becomes a Trippie, one of the obsessed fans of the show. She gets hypnotized by a psychologist, who gets her out of it, but everyone wonders why a show would be hypnotizing people.

Long story short, despite Laurie's parents being decidedly British about things, stiff upper lip and all, they do wind up fleeing after a cousin drops by to put helmets on those who won't voluntarily Hail the Tripod. Well, that and Tripods setting down and making their way to population centers, with Trippies hanging off all the legs to prevent attack.

By the time the family flees to try to reach Switzerland with Andy in tow, most forms of mass transit have shut down. Indeed, they take a boat to Gloustershire, get shipped back to the mainland, then hijack the plane. Which leads to tense moments getting across Germany into Geneva. After quite a bit of effort, we see the family and a few additions setting up shop atop a mountain in a train tunnel. The book does end with some hope, even as seemingly all of humanity over 13 is capped by the Tripods.

By far the best part of this is the forward he wrote for this edition, discussing how the 80s BBC series (which evidently started deviating quite a bit about halfway through the first season) was panned by a Famous British Sci-Fi author, who sniffed about how the Tripods didn't even have infrared. As the author points out, Sci-Fi often misses things as the eras progress, pointing out that almost no science fiction predicted the rise of the internet. So, after the first attack, when England is laughing about the
Tripod's lack of infrared....

Also, unlike the original trilogy, there are more than a few female characters running around, and Laurie's sister even smacks him for suggesting that women don't belong in the resistance.

The one thing that did amuse me unrelated to anything else was that, in the original trilogy, every measure was Imperial. In this one, we gets meters and kilograms, which makes much more sense in the setting.

Honestly, I like that he wrote this, even if he did use it to correct things that became problematic as the originals aged. I enjoyed seeing the beginning, and remain amused that a kids show would brainwash the populace into accepting the peace of the herd instead of buying toys. On the whole, the series remains something I'd happily hand down to my nieces and nephews as they get older.