The Tripods
Encyclopedia
The Tripods is a series of young adult novels
written by John Christopher
, beginning in 1967. The first two were the basis of a science fiction TV-series, produced in the United Kingdom
in the 1980s.
The story of The Tripods is a variation on post-apocalyptic
literature. Humanity has been conquered and enslaved by "the tripods", unseen alien entities (later identified as "Masters
") who travel about in gigantic three-legged walking machines. Human society is largely pastoral, with few habitations larger than villages, and what little industry exists is conducted under the watchful presence of the tripods. Lifestyle is reminiscent of the Middle Ages
, but artifacts from later ages are still used, giving individuals and homes an anachronistic appearance.
Humans are controlled from the age of 14 by implants called "caps", which suppress curiosity and creativity and leave the recipient placid and docile, incapable of dissent. The caps cause them to worship the tripods. Some people, whose minds are broken (instead of successfully being controlled) under the pressure of the cap's hypnotic power become vagrants, who wander the countryside. One of the books contains a discussion among Masters that "We should cap humans sooner, to reduce the risk of precocious people getting independent-minded soon enough to try to evade being Capped, but we cannot, because we cannot Cap them until their braincases have stopped growing."
. US publisher: Simon & Schuster
In the year 2100, the world is controlled by machines called Tripods. Life goes on largely as it had in the pre-industrial era, as all of humanity is subject to mental controls which prevent anyone from challenging the established order. Will, a thirteen year old living in the small (fictional) English village of Wherton, is looking forward to the transition to adulthood which will take place on the next "Capping Day", until a chance meeting with a mysterious Vagrant named Ozymandias sends him on a quest to discover a world beyond the Tripods' control. He is accompanied by his cousin Henry, and a French teenager named Jean-Paul, nicknamed "Beanpole" for his height and slimness, and punning similarity to his real name.
On their journey the boys have many adventures. The novel climaxes with the discovery that earlier on Will was captured by a tripod and implanted with a tracking device and that the tripods intend for the boys to unwittingly lead them to the human resistance (an organisation which the boys have been seeking). Harry and Beanpole remove the device which causes a nearby tripod to attack the group. The boys defeat the tripod and eventually reach, and offer their services to, the resistance, located in the titular White Mountains.
by competing in a sporting competition, 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 fails to win in the jumping events.
The winners are taken by Tripods, which they discover to be machines operated by living creatures, to the Tripod city, which is located in a sealed, pressurized dome that sits astride a river. Inside the city, the boys are confronted with the actual aliens, which they refer to as the Masters
. Human males are made servants for life inside the cities, while beautiful females are killed and preserved in museums of sorts, for the Masters to admire. The Masters themselves live under environmental conditions lethal to unprotected humans, and even with the breathing masks the slaves are provided with, the artificially increased gravity inside the cities slowly wastes them away; hence the sporting competitions to select the fittest and most resilient of the human stock to attend the Masters' needs.
While Fritz is severely abused by his Master, Will's Master turns out to be rather benevolent. From him Will learns much about the Masters' origins and habits, and eventually the Master trusts him so much that he reveals an upcoming operation in which the Earth's atmosphere is to be replaced by the Masters' toxic air, eventually killing off all life on Earth and enabling the Masters to assume full control of the planet. Will meticulously records every piece of information in a diary. When the Master one day finds that diary and confronts Will, the boy kills him with a punch to a sensitive nerve cluster in order to maintain his secret.
With time running out, Will and Fritz prepare their escape via the river which flows through the city. With his mask sealed airtight, Will manages to escape, but nearly suffocates but for Beanpole's timely assistance, who has been waiting hidden in the ruins surrounding the Tripod colony. The two wait for Fritz, but he does not appear, and in the end the coming winter forces them to return to the White Mountains without him.
The title refers to the gold color prevalent in the Masters' cities, and that the increased gravity inside the cities makes the human slaves feel as though their bodies have become leaden.
by a religion worshipping the Tripods, with some similar features.
The resistance then ambushes a Tripod and captures a Master. Upon the discovery that alcohol
has a very strong soporific
effect on the Masters - and that, unlike other incapacitating agents which are tried, is undetectable by them - 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. The city bans human slaves to prevent a second infiltration. Next, the Resistance attempts an aerial bombing
using its newly constructed aeroplanes. This attack also fails — because the Masters can disable the motors from a distance, presumably with an electromagnetic pulse
. Fritz then leads an attack launched from air balloons, which succeeds, although at a terrible cost to the friends: after all the other bombs have been deflected away harmlessly by the city's impregnable dome, Will's cousin Henry lands his balloon and detonates his bomb by hand.
The world is liberated from the Masters' thought control and technology is rediscovered rapidly. The Masters' spaceship finally arrives, only to launch nuclear devices that 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, and once this happens the captive Master abruptly dies. Humanity is saved, but the saga ends with a renewal of nationalist sentiments. The reader is invited by Will's musings to wonder: having mastered the Masters, can people master themselves? Will, Beanpole, and Fritz decide to band together to help unite the people again.
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.
written twenty years after the publication of the original "trilogy", and set in the late twentieth century.
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. It is revealed 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 a television show called The Trippy Show, and then use the caps to control them permanently when they eventually land. The tripods 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, known as Laurie. 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.
in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network
in Australia. The music soundtrack was written by Ken Freeman.
Series one of The Tripods, broadcast in 1984, which had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays Alick Rowe, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second series (1985) covers The City of Gold and Lead. Although a television script had been written for the third series, it never went into production.
The first series was released on both VHS and DVD. The BBC released Tripods - The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD in March 2009.
Young adult literature
Young-adult fiction or young adult literature , also juvenile fiction, is fiction written for, published for, or marketed to adolescents and young adults, roughly ages 14 to 21. The Young Adult Library Services of the American Library Association defines a young adult as "someone between the...
written by John Christopher
Samuel Youd
Samuel Youd is a British author, best known for his science fiction writings under the pseudonym John Christopher, including the novel The Death of Grass and the young adult oriented novel series The Tripods...
, beginning in 1967. The first two were the basis of a science fiction TV-series, produced in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in the 1980s.
The story of The Tripods is a variation on post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
literature. Humanity has been conquered and enslaved by "the tripods", unseen alien entities (later identified as "Masters
Masters (The Tripods)
The Masters are a fictional intelligent alien life form in John Christopher's The Tripods trilogy. They are first mentioned and seen in chapter 6 of The City of Gold and Lead.-Biology:According to Will, the chief protagonist:...
") who travel about in gigantic three-legged walking machines. Human society is largely pastoral, with few habitations larger than villages, and what little industry exists is conducted under the watchful presence of the tripods. Lifestyle is reminiscent of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, but artifacts from later ages are still used, giving individuals and homes an anachronistic appearance.
Humans are controlled from the age of 14 by implants called "caps", which suppress curiosity and creativity and leave the recipient placid and docile, incapable of dissent. The caps cause them to worship the tripods. Some people, whose minds are broken (instead of successfully being controlled) under the pressure of the cap's hypnotic power become vagrants, who wander the countryside. One of the books contains a discussion among Masters that "We should cap humans sooner, to reduce the risk of precocious people getting independent-minded soon enough to try to evade being Capped, but we cannot, because we cannot Cap them until their braincases have stopped growing."
The White Mountains (1967)
UK publisher: Hamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton
Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
. US publisher: Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
In the year 2100, the world is controlled by machines called Tripods. Life goes on largely as it had in the pre-industrial era, as all of humanity is subject to mental controls which prevent anyone from challenging the established order. Will, a thirteen year old living in the small (fictional) English village of Wherton, is looking forward to the transition to adulthood which will take place on the next "Capping Day", until a chance meeting with a mysterious Vagrant named Ozymandias sends him on a quest to discover a world beyond the Tripods' control. He is accompanied by his cousin Henry, and a French teenager named Jean-Paul, nicknamed "Beanpole" for his height and slimness, and punning similarity to his real name.
On their journey the boys have many adventures. The novel climaxes with the discovery that earlier on Will was captured by a tripod and implanted with a tracking device and that the tripods intend for the boys to unwittingly lead them to the human resistance (an organisation which the boys have been seeking). Harry and Beanpole remove the device which causes a nearby tripod to attack the group. The boys defeat the tripod and eventually reach, and offer their services to, the resistance, located in the titular White Mountains.
The City of Gold and Lead (1968)
Will, Henry, and Beanpole have spent a year living among the free men in the White Mountains. The Resistance now charges Will, Beanpole and a German boy, Fritz, now wearing realistic yet harmless caps, to infiltrate a Tripod cityThe City of Gold
The City of Gold is the name given to the dwelling places of the Masters in the novel The City of Gold and Lead , the second book of John Christopher's trilogy, The Tripods....
by competing in a sporting competition, 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 fails to win in the jumping events.
The winners are taken by Tripods, which they discover to be machines operated by living creatures, to the Tripod city, which is located in a sealed, pressurized dome that sits astride a river. Inside the city, the boys are confronted with the actual aliens, which they refer to as the Masters
Masters (The Tripods)
The Masters are a fictional intelligent alien life form in John Christopher's The Tripods trilogy. They are first mentioned and seen in chapter 6 of The City of Gold and Lead.-Biology:According to Will, the chief protagonist:...
. Human males are made servants for life inside the cities, while beautiful females are killed and preserved in museums of sorts, for the Masters to admire. The Masters themselves live under environmental conditions lethal to unprotected humans, and even with the breathing masks the slaves are provided with, the artificially increased gravity inside the cities slowly wastes them away; hence the sporting competitions to select the fittest and most resilient of the human stock to attend the Masters' needs.
While Fritz is severely abused by his Master, Will's Master turns out to be rather benevolent. From him Will learns much about the Masters' origins and habits, and eventually the Master trusts him so much that he reveals an upcoming operation in which the Earth's atmosphere is to be replaced by the Masters' toxic air, eventually killing off all life on Earth and enabling the Masters to assume full control of the planet. Will meticulously records every piece of information in a diary. When the Master one day finds that diary and confronts Will, the boy kills him with a punch to a sensitive nerve cluster in order to maintain his secret.
With time running out, Will and Fritz prepare their escape via the river which flows through the city. With his mask sealed airtight, Will manages to escape, but nearly suffocates but for Beanpole's timely assistance, who has been waiting hidden in the ruins surrounding the Tripod colony. The two wait for Fritz, but he does not appear, and in the end the coming winter forces them to return to the White Mountains without him.
The title refers to the gold color prevalent in the Masters' cities, and that the increased gravity inside the cities makes the human slaves feel as though their bodies have become leaden.
The Pool of Fire (1968)
Will returns to the headquarters of the Resistance after several months in the City of Gold and Lead, where he and Fritz (who has escaped the city some time after Will and found his way back to the Resistance) travel to Eastern Europe, the Caucasus region, and the Middle East and set up resistance cells with young boys who question the power of the Tripods. The cult of the Tripods is strong in the Middle East; the Masters via the Caps have replaced IslamIslam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
by a religion worshipping the Tripods, with some similar features.
The resistance then ambushes a Tripod and captures a Master. Upon the discovery that alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
has a very strong soporific
Sleep
Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...
effect on the Masters - and that, unlike other incapacitating agents which are tried, is undetectable by them - 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. The city bans human slaves to prevent a second infiltration. Next, the Resistance attempts an aerial bombing
Airstrike
An air strike is an attack on a specific objective by military aircraft during an offensive mission. Air strikes are commonly delivered from aircraft such as fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and others...
using its newly constructed aeroplanes. This attack also fails — because the Masters can disable the motors from a distance, presumably with an electromagnetic pulse
Electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. The abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation usually results from certain types of high energy explosions, especially a nuclear explosion, or from a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field...
. Fritz then leads an attack launched from air balloons, which succeeds, although at a terrible cost to the friends: after all the other bombs have been deflected away harmlessly by the city's impregnable dome, Will's cousin Henry lands his balloon and detonates his bomb by hand.
The world is liberated from the Masters' thought control and technology is rediscovered rapidly. The Masters' spaceship finally arrives, only to launch nuclear devices that destroy the remains of the cities, presumably to prevent the humans from reverse engineering
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
the Masters' technology and using it to launch a retaliatory expedition against them, and once this happens the captive Master abruptly dies. Humanity is saved, but the saga ends with a renewal of nationalist sentiments. The reader is invited by Will's musings to wonder: having mastered the Masters, can people master themselves? Will, Beanpole, and Fritz decide to band together to help unite the people again.
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.
When the Tripods Came (1988)
When the Tripods Came is a prequelPrequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
written twenty years after the publication of the original "trilogy", and set in the late twentieth century.
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. It is revealed 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 a television show called The Trippy Show, and then use the caps to control them permanently when they eventually land. The tripods 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
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
boy, known as Laurie. As society slowly falls under the control of the Masters, he and his family escape to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, 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
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
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.
Comic books
Multiple graphic adaptations have been produced, notably including:- Boys' LifeBoys' LifeBoys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America . Its targeted readership is young American males between the ages of 6 and 18.Boys' Life is published in two demographic editions...
, The Boy Scouts of America magazine, serialized all three books in the trilogy from May 1981 to August 1986. Artist Frank BolleFrank BolleFrank Bolle is an American comic strip artist, comic book artist and illustrator.-Career:-Children's books:...
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' plot, although the characters are younger than the those in the original stories (to appeal to the target audience of scouts) and the text and illustrations are often very expository. One example is a panel showing Julius looking obviously very haggard, and to reinforce this, Will has a thought-bubble which reads "Julius looks so tired".
- In 1985, the BBC initiated BEEBBeebThe nickname Beeb may refer to:*The British Broadcasting Corporation , sometimes called the Beeb or Auntie Beeb*BEEB, a BBC children's magazine published in 1985*The BBC Micro home computer from 1982, built for the BBC by Acorn Computers Ltd...
, the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Junior Television Magazine, and started to present in picture strip form additional adventures of Will, Henry, and Beanpole on their way to the White Mountains, starting at some unspecified point during the fourth episode of the first BBC serial as the trio pass through ruined Paris, and then heading off at a tangent to the television version. From Issue 6, the boys were accompanied on their journey by a young woman named Fizzio, a totally original character who was introduced into the strip in order to increase reader interest for girls; an example of which was shown in Issues 13 and 14 when Fizzio becomes lost in a heavy rainstorm, being rescued by an elderly woman and taken to a remote cottage. However, it turns out that this seemingly kind woman is actually quite mad, seeing Fizzio as a replacement for her own daughter who was taken by the Tripods years before. Fizzio ends up being held against her will and threatened with death if she tries to escape, but gets away when her captor brings her a meal by the simple yet effective method of hiding behind the door of the bedroom where she has been imprisoned (luckily for Fizzio, her new mother has not thought to restrain her in any way!), then jumping out to ambush the woman and knocking her unconscious. Each issue, the strip consisted of three pages; the first two in colour and the third in black and white. The strip were drawn by John M. Burns. BEEB folded after only 20 issues (approx. 6 months) due to poor sales, leaving the four heroes in the middle of an adventure and – like the final episode of the then yet to be broadcast second season of the television series – on a cliffhanger ending that would never be resolved.
Television series
The television version of The Tripods was jointly produced by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
in Australia. The music soundtrack was written by Ken Freeman.
Series one of The Tripods, broadcast in 1984, which had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays Alick Rowe, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second series (1985) covers The City of Gold and Lead. Although a television script had been written for the third series, it never went into production.
The first series was released on both VHS and DVD. The BBC released Tripods - The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD in March 2009.