P.D.James, Author

[Zoe Mackay]

P.D. James has died at the age of 94

She was most famous for her crime writing, but her 1992 novel "Children of Men" is a significant contribution to the "Dystopian Fiction" sub-genre and was adapted into a well-received film directed by Alfonso Cuarón in 2006.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

That's a good span of years, and she seems to have used them very well. My wife knows her fiction, and when we were talking of James' passing I was sure I had never encountered her work; I was very-very surprised to learn in an on-line obit for her that she had written the book The Children of Men, from which the very fine film Children of Men was adapted. She was clearly a versatile and talented person. RIP.

 

[Hex]

Ah. Sad news.

 

[sooC]

I loved Children of Men, its strange what stays with you after reading a book, for me it was the old people watching australian soaps. Or maybe my memory is playing tricks, better dig out the book again.

 

[Michael Colton]

How sad. She was the only writer of 'traditional' crime novels that I can recall enjoying.

 

[wam]

For years I listened to a game show called "My Word" on radio. There was a cast of only four - Muir and Norden, Ian Wallace and "Phyllis James". She was always credited as Phyllis on the radio unless she was talking about her books. Maybe that's why her career on radio disappeared from all of the BBC obituaries.
The trouble with the film of "The children of men" was that it came at around the same time as a couple of others with the same premise ("Handmaid's Tale" and a portuguese version of "Low Flying Aircraft"). Very different films but why take up the theme at the same time when it had been ignored previously. Admittedly, the Atwood story was new but neither the James or the Ballard were recent.

 

[Prescott Fry]

RIP

 

[Prescott Fry]

You will be missed