The Tripods
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The Tripods is series of novels written by Samuel Youd (under the pen name "John Christopher") beginning in the late 1960s. The first two were the basis of a science fiction TV-series, produced in the UK in the 1980s.
The story of the Tripods is post-apocalyptic: Humanity has fallen into an age of social stagnation, with technology in decay, and the population living in a society reminiscent of the 1700s, or even the Middle Ages. The humans live in total, naive and ecstatic adoration of the "Tripods", huge metallic-looking alien creatures, which they see as their saviours. They are kept under thought control from the age of 13 by cranial implants called "caps", which leave them with a life of modesty and serenity by preventing curiosity and creativity, not to mention any traces of dissent.
Disney have held the rights to The Tripods since 1997. There is speculation that a film version is in pre-production with Australian-born director Gregor Jordan signed on to rewrite and direct for Walt Disney's Touchstone Pictures label[1].
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[edit] Books
[edit] The White Mountains (1967)
The story begins in a small village in England. Will, the narrator, is 12, not quite a year short of the time when he will be "capped". His cousin, Henry, is of a similar age. Feeling uncomfortable with the idea of losing their creativity, the two follow the advice of a mysterious vagrant who goes by the name of "Ozymandias", and undertake a long journey to some mysterious "White Mountains" (actually, the Alps, literally translated from the French Mont Blanc). After crossing the Channel, they join forces with a young, inventive French boy, Jean-Paul (his name is Anglicized to Zhanpole [nickname: Beanpole] by the narrator, and he is so referenced for the rest of the series), and head for the Alpine region. The boys go through the remains of Paris, abandoned and ravaged by some ancient war, and finally arrive at the General Quarters of the human resistance, having while en route, and mostly by sheer luck, destroyed a Tripod. (A scene in the 2005 cinematic version of H. G. Well's War of the Worlds recalls this when Ray, played by Tom Cruise, kills one of the alien craft in the same manner.)
While written for a young audience--being rather short (under two hundred pages) and availing itself of markedly unsophisticated vocabulary--the book is swiftly plotted and filled with narrow escapes, except for a brief period during which the boys live at a manor owned by a wealthy French count. Will forms a strong relationship with their preteen daughter, Eloise, and is heartbroken when Eloise is chosen "queen of the tournament" at an athletic competition that the count hosts for knights living in the surrounding countryside, for Eloise must then go off to serve the Tripods in their domed city. (The Tripods, it turns out, actually have three cities: one in Germany, one on the Chinese coast, and one on the Panama Canal.)
[edit] The City of Gold and Lead (1967)
The Resistance charges Will, Beanpole and a young German boy, Fritz, to infiltrate a Tripod city by competing in a sporting exhibition (very similar in nature to the Summer Olympics) in which the winners of the events are to be offered to the Tripods "for service". Will, a boxer, and Fritz, a runner, win their respective contests, while Beanpole is unsuccessful in the jumping events. Will and Fritz are taken by a Tripod, which they discover to be a machine, to the Tripod city, which is located in a sealed, pressurized dome that sits astride a river (presumably the Rhine) somewhere in northwestern Europe. Inside the city, the boys are confronted with the actual Aliens, which call themselves The Masters: three-legged, three-eyed, reptilian creatures from a planet which has a stronger gravitational field and a hotter ambient temperature. The Masters also breathe a greenish gas toxic to humans. Conditions on the Masters' world are re-created inside the city. The boys are treated as slaves and pets--being given their own airlocked rooms in which they can live comfortably without gas masks when their Masters do not require their services. Since the Masters are unaware that the boys are false-capped, they never consider the possibility of hostile behaviour. Thus, the boys are able to spy unobtrusively on a significant portion of the city, and Will compiles a detailed journal of his observations and findings for the benefit of the resistance movement--which his Master ultimately discovers, leading to unpleasant fallout. Will is able to develop an emotional bond with his Master that results in him learning the details of the Masters' conquest of the earth, and that the stakes of the mission are much higher than anyone had foreseen: the Masters have initiated a project to replace the Earth's atmosphere with their own in preparation for the colonization of the planet, which will obliterate the human race in the process. The spaceship which carries the processing equipment is already on its way, and is due in a few years. Eventually Will's true status is discovered by his Master, but Will kills him and is able to flee the city.
The title of the book refers to the great gold colored wall surrounding the Masters' city, and the narrator's comment that increased gravity inside the city made him feel as though his body had become as heavy as lead.
[edit] The Pool of Fire (1968)
Will returns to the headquarters of the Resistance, which has significantly grown and joined with similar movements in Asia and America. Will and his companions undertake tasks aimed at the destruction of the three alien cities which control all the caps and tripods on Earth. The first of these is the ambush of a Tripod and capture of a living specimen. Having discovered that alcohol has a very strong soporific effect on the Masters, the Resistance schedules simultaneous commando attacks on the cities. Will is one of the leaders of the attack on the European city. By introducing alcohol into the city water system, the raiding party is able to incapacitate all of the Masters and ultimately to destroy the integrity of the City's sealed environment, killing all the Masters. The attack on the second city, in eastern Asia, is likewise successful, but the attack on the last city, in Panama, is not. After aerial bombing attempts fail, because the Masters can disable motors from a distance, the third city is eventually destroyed in a suicide bombing attack. The world is liberated from the Masters' thought control and technology is rediscovered at a vertiginous rate. The Masters' spaceship finally arrives, only to launch nuclear devices which destroy the remains of the cities, presumably to prevent the humans from reverse engineering the Masters' technology and using it to launch a retaliatory expedition against them. Humanity is saved, but the saga ends with the rebirth of nationalist sentiments. The reader is invited by Will's musings to wonder: having mastered the Masters, can men master themselves?
The title of the book refers to the mysterious power source of the Masters' cities, which is a crucial element in the attack on the first city.
[edit] When the Tripods Came (1988)
When the Tripods Came is actually a prequel written twenty years after the publication of the original "trilogy", allegedly because science fiction author Brian Aldiss questioned the story of The Masters being able to overcome 20th century technology.
In the second book of the main trilogy, one of the Masters tells the main character about the Masters' conquest of the Earth. The plot of the book follows the description of the conquest previously given. We learn that the Masters were afraid of the technological potential of Humanity and decided on a pre-emptive strike. Unable to defeat Humanity in a conventional war, the Masters use their superior mind-control technology to hypnotise part of Humanity through television, and then use the caps to control them permanently when they eventually land. The capped then cap other people until the capped are in control in most places.
Like the narrator of the original trilogy, the narrator of When the Tripods Came is a young English boy. As society slowly falls under the control of the Masters, he and his family escape to Switzerland, which adopted an isolationist stance to hold out against the initial invasion. Eventually it is invaded by France and Germany, who have fallen under the subjugation of the Masters, and the narrator is forced to flee into the Alps with his family as the Swiss are also enslaved by the Masters. Here, they establish the "White Mountains" resistance movement that features heavily in the original trilogy, and the book ends on a hopeful note.
The Tripods trilogy can be read and understood without any need to have read the prequel.
[edit] Comic books
Multiple adaptations to comic books form have been done. Two notable ones are:
Boys' Life The Boy Scouts of America magazine serialized all three books in the trilogy from May 1981 to August 1986. Frank Bolle, now a resident of Connecticut, drew the single page black and white proofs which were then inked by another person. The comics were a fairly accurate retelling of the original series, although one criticism is that the dialogue was "dumbed down" and changed to be blatantly expository. One example is a frame showing Julius looking obviously very haggard, and yet Will has a thought-bubble saying "Julius looks so tired."
In 1985, the BBC launched BEEB, the BBC Magazine, and started to present additional adventures of Will, Henry, and Beanpole on their way to the White Mountains. Each issue contained two colour pages and one black and white page. The strips were drawn by John M. Burns. The BEEB magazine folded after 20 issues (approx 6 months), leaving the three heroes in the middle of an adventure.
[edit] TV series
Season one of the Tripods, which had 13 half-hour episodes, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second season covers The City of Gold and Lead. The project was cancelled before the third season went into production. The first season is available on DVD but the second has yet to be released. Although preorders were taken in 2003 for the second season, they were all canceled. As of 2006, there was some hopeful discussion on different websites about a release of Season 2, or possibly a release of both seasons plus extra materials. Unfortunately, there is still no date set for this.
update: As of at least August 2006, you can get the complete seasons 1 and 2 on dvd in science fiction convention dealers rooms. The label says "Trademark RTV Studios" and a bar code (isbn?) "02400-67120" for season 1 and "22402-27122" for season 2. Each season comes in the form of 4 inkjet-printable dvd-r disks in a double-width case. The outer case sleeve is also ink jet. They have all the appearance of something bootlegged, but they are sold over the counter by several different reputable vendors who have been in business for years. On the other hand, searching the net for RTV Studios or the bar code numbers above does not turn up anything remotely related to these dvds.
The series features titles which look like computer-generated credits but were actually made by human animators, as well as a soundtrack by Ken Freeman. It can be noted that the series introduce several minor changes from the book, notably the shape of the Masters and Tripods, which have no tentacles (although the Tripods do have a mechanical (?) claw-arm that they sometimes use); the introduction of "cognoscs", spiritual life-forms vastly superior to the Masters themelves; and more interesting main characters, including love interests for both Will and Beanpole. The original texts have almost no female characters at all. Mr. Youd was recently asked about this for an interview on Wordcandy. He replied that at the time of writing the series, it was generally accepted that girls would read books with boy main characters, but not vice versa. He also stated that he felt the addition of an entire family of girls to the TV series was a bit "over the top". The series is also notable for featuring non-humanoid aliens, which was uncommon at the time.
A film adaptation was announced by Touchstone Pictures, to be directed by Gregor Jordan slated for release in 2007.
[edit] Influence of H.G. Wells
H. G. Wells' book The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, initiated the entire "Invasion of Earth" sub-genre. In it, invaders from Mars land in England, construct huge tripedal "fighting machines" and completely overwhelm all resistance which humans try to put up. One character, a former artilleryman whose comrades were killed and their guns destroyed by the Martians, proposes that those humans determined to go on resisting the invaders hide out in tunnels and sewers and carry on the resistance from generation to generation until their descendants find a way to defeat the invaders and liberate the Earth.
In the event, within the framework of Wells' book all this proves unnecessary as the invaders are killed by earthly microbes within a few weeks. However, the alternate ending remains a tantalizing possibility, which quite a few writers following Wells tried to write out in full.
Christopher follows the general outline set out by Wells, though with various changes. Christopher's invaders do not come from Mars but from another solar system (when the books were written, the possibility of intelligent life on Mars was already discounted, and conversely the themes of interstellar travel, invasion and colonization have become common in SF, as they were not in Wells' time). Also, Christopher's invaders, unlike Wells', do not use humans as food animals (which would have created a far more ghastly setting for the boys' childhood) though their ultimate plan for humanity is even more devastating than in Wells' book.
