John Christopher, who wrote science fiction for children and adults, is getting the digital treatment. The author, who died last year at the age of 89, is having his backlist digitized, and a number of his older books republished, after, largely, falling out of print in the U.S. Through a deal struck by agent Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary, with Simon & Schuster Children's Books, Christopher's works, including his once bestselling Tripods Trilogy, will be re-published over a three-year period.
The Tripods Trilogy was originally published in 1967 by Macmillan – the first book in the series is called The White Mountains – and has been, Galen said, "continuously in print" since then. S&S Children's began publishing the series after it acquired Macmillan, and has the books in various formats. The YA series is about a teenager-driven uprising against an alien race – they're machines with three "legs" – that has enslaved Earth. But Christopher's other titles, Galen noted, have been unavailable in the U.S. for at least 20 years.
Through the new deal, which Galen struck with S&S Children's president and publisher Jon Anderson, the publisher will get the e-book rights to the Tripods Trilogy, as well as a sequel, first published in 1988, called When the Tripods Came. Also in the deal is hardcover, paperback and e-book rights to 12 other books by Christopher. Overall, S&S will get rights to 16 novels, relaunching them over a three-year period. Additionally, one of the books in the deal, The Lotus Caves, is serving as the basis for a forthcoming SyFy Channel series called High Noon.
