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Bad Dream Hardcover – May 1, 2003

by John Christopher (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
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A dark vision of the near future, where entertainment and power have become indistinguishable. Is this the Europe of tomorrow? Virtual Reality has become the predominant form of entertainment for the masses: with a helmet and glove and appropriate software programmes, they can spend their leisure time in fantasy worlds. One company has developed Total Virtual, an extension of the original in which the dreamer lies unconscious while fantasy worlds are experienced, not through helmet and glove, but by direct input to the brain. Anna's son has died in an act of rebellion against European dominion over Britain, and she opts for treatment using Total Virtual - to rediscover her lost child, at least in the illusion of fantasy. But when she dies in the clinic and more suspicious deaths follow, her brother, Michael, is left to discover the real, sinister objective behind the Total programme.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Severn House
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.56 x 0.95 x 8.92 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0727859609
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0727859600
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran Christopher, best known for his recent young adult fiction (the Tripods and Sword of the Spirits trilogies), is at the top of his form in a near-future SF novel that calls to mind his adult classic, No Blade of Grass (1956). Thanks to quiet British restraint, the glimpses of increasingly violent wrongness are more disturbing than entire planets being zapped in a routine space opera. Michael Frodsham is part of an influential Anglo-German family involved in producing virtual reality programs for mass entertainment, now also developing VR into a tool for psychological therapy. As a minor bureaucrat in the British hospital system, however, Michael uneasily begins to suspect that the technology could have more sinister uses as the oppressive European union aims to devour Britain whole. And so he must resist. Christopher avoids standard thriller formula with sharp attention to detail and his refusal to oversimplify the characters. Even people who behave the worst have their reasons-some of which they try to explain, some of which readers can figure out for themselves. The villains are convincing in their moral slovenliness. Likewise, Michael reveals himself as a man of honor without being unbelievably priggish or noble; he's just someone who can't take the easy way out by ignoring his sympathies and principles. He turns out to be unexpectedly admirable, and so does this subtle novel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author


John Christopher (Sam Youd) was born in England in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm. His early years were spent in Lancashire and Hampshire. He left school at sixteen to work as a local government clerk until being called up for army service in 1941, and spent the following four and a half years with the Royal Corps of Signals, in Gibraltar, North Africa, Italy, and Austria.

On leaving the army he renewed a teenage ambition toward being a writer, and in 1947, on the basis of an unfinished novel, won an Atlantic Award, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, which enabled him to devote himself to writing for a year. He tried to justify the award by writing serious novels, but subsequently also wrote detective thrillers, light comedies, novels based on cricket, and science fiction, to which he had been passionately devoted in his early teens. After several adult science fiction novels, he was asked to write for the young adult field, and ended up writing sixteen books in that genre, including ""The Guardians, The Lotus Caves, Dom and Va, Empty World,"" and the Sword and Fireball trilogies, as well as the Tripods trilogy. Following a BBC television series in 1984 based on the Tripods books, he wrote a prequel, ""When the Tripods Came,"" explaining how it all came about.

Sam Youd is a widower with five children and numerous grandchildren, and lives in Rye, in the county of Sussex, England.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Severn House (May 1, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0727859609
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0727859600
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.56 x 0.95 x 8.92 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 3 ratings

About the author

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John Christopher

John Christopher

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Sam Youd was born in Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.

As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: 'In the early thirties,' he later wrote, 'we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.'

Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies ... In all, under his own name and a variety of pen-names, he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories.

He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass, and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, YA dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy.

'I read somewhere,' Sam once said, 'that I have been cited as the greatest serial killer in fictional history, having destroyed civilisation in so many different ways - through famine, freezing, earthquakes, feral youth combined with religious fanaticism, and progeria.'

Titles published under the pen-name of Hilary Ford and under his own name are also available on Amazon.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
3 global ratings

Top review from the United States

Robert Spencer
5.0 out of 5 stars mature, questioning sf from a master
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2004
I am an american reader who read Christopher's early work years ago. Christopher has matured as a writer, and I was very impressed by the complexity of this novel, both politically and in terms of character development. Here is a character far from a Hollywood hero; a thoughtful, doubting man living in a web of personal hiistory and family relationships who must come to grips with a horrifying secret. The novel is set against a not too distant future that is a bleak vision of Britain's place in the EU, vividly imagined by Christopher. A book that would be an excellent choice for reading groups, there's a lot to think about here, issues of technology, freedom, and resposiblility the West must face soon.
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Top reviews from other countries

JAW
5.0 out of 5 stars Unreservedly recommended.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
This literary swansong of the late, great John Christopher/Sam Youd displays his powers of writing beautiful crystal-clear English prose, combined with masterful and trademark 'unsentimental' plotting, undiminished. It also has the bonus of being both topical and prophetic, as befits a great author's last words to us.
Set in a thinly disguised Rye in Sussex (Youd's home town) it concerns events as Britain struggles to leave an authoritarian European Union. A co-plot concerns the perils of submersive virtual reality technology and its effect on authentic human life and society.
Why labour the point? It's by John Christopher. It's the last book he published. His preeminent writing skills were undiminished. It reads as if written today. Therefore why wait? Treat yourself and buy it.
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