The Death Guard is the only published novel of the English author Philip George Chadwick. Despite the fact that the author is virtually unknown to the wider public, his work has received attention from literary scholars. The novel contains many themes later developed by L Ron Hubbard and James Blish

James Blish

James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...

. Chadwick was a political thinker with socialist tendencies, a Fabian

Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...

 and subsequently an Independent and a disciple of H.G. Wells.

Legend has it that H.G. Wells used to refer to this book as one of the greatest he had ever read. It was written shortly after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, but by the time it was picked up for publication, World War II was already underway and allegedly, Chadwick had been killed in combat, though the 1992 paperback states that he died in 1955. To complicate matters even further, the printing house that was handling the first run of the novel was bombed in an air raid, and almost all copies were destroyed. Consequently, most science fiction fans wrote off The Death Guard as pure myth, a figment of Wells's prodigious imagination, and for years it was considered a lost novel. In 1992 it was republished.

Plot summary

In its tale of a chemist who creates an army of bloodthirsty plant-based humanoids out of a desire to abolish war once and for all (the rationale being that no country would attack England if it were known she possessed such a defense), the book foreshadowed the rise of nuclear weapons and Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 politics. Continental Europe forms an alliance and invades Britain

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...

.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part of this novel we meet the inventors of the artificial life. We follow their story from their first meeting through the time when they relocate their lab to the Congo for its more conducive weather conditions. The first we hear of the matured Death Guard (nicknamed Pugs) is via a radio broadcast that is ended prematurely by the hideous death of the announcer.

The next part is a tour of the process of making and growing the "pugs", as the protagonist "enlists" in one of factories and gets a firsthand look at what his uncle and grandfather had wrought.

The third section recounts the war with continental Europe and the breakdown of infrastructure. Involving poisonous electric gas, "humanite" bombs (atomic bombs), and the unfeeling march of the Death Guard across the very land they were designed to protect. Later the Death Guard continues to wander unchecked across the broken landscape even after all the enemy has been killed. The resulting carnage reduces whole cities and towns in Britain to smoking rubble.

Adaptations

It was adapted for radio for broadcast on New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 radio stations, WKNH Radio and NHPR starring Edward X. Young and produced and directed by Kate Linaker (aka Kate Phillips).