I think I am the last person at Lemuria who has not yet finished reading Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars. Truth be told, I am about two chapters from the end, and all I really want to be doing right now is reading. However, instead, I thought I would share a list of some of my favorite end-of-the-world/post-apocalyptic lit with you.
(In no particular order)
1. The Dog Stars, Peter Heller
In the near future, a flu pandemic has decimated civilization, leaving only scattered pockets of survivors to fend for themselves. Hig is one of the healthy ones. For the past nine years, he has coexisted with a loner named Bangley at an abandoned airport in eastern Colorado. Trying not to think of his former life, Hig finds sanity in fishing, staring at the constellations, and flying his plane. With his dog, Jasper, Hig flies the perimeter of their safety zone in his 1956 Cessna. Bangley has a well-stocked arsenal, and between them, they keep a watchful eye for unfriendly invaders. On one of his forays, through broken static, Hig hears another pilot over the radio, an incident that haunts him until he goes in search of this other human being. Packing enough supplies to get him there and back, he takes off for western Colorado in search of the voice. During his six-week journey, he discovers more than he bargained for. After an award-winning career as an adventure writer and NPR contributor, Heller has written a stunning debut novel. In spare, poetic prose, he portrays a soaring spirit of hope that triumphs over heartbreak, trauma, and insurmountable struggles.
Did I mention that Peter Heller will be at Lemuria August 21st for a signing and reading?! Dog Stars is also our First Edition Club Pick for this month, so all of our FEC members will be receiving mylared copies of the book as well!
2. The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian
The story of a hospital preserved, afloat, after the Earth is flooded beneath seven miles of water, and a young
medical student who finds herself gifted with strange powers and a frightening destiny. Jemma Claflin is a third-year medical student at the unnamed hospital that is the only thing to survive after an apocalyptic storm. Inside the hospital, beds are filled with children with the most rare and complicated childhood diseases–a sort of new-age Noah’s Ark, a hospital filled with two of each kind of sickness. As Jemma and her fellow doctors attempt to make sense of what has happened to the world, and try to find the meaning of their futures, Jemma becomes a Moses figure, empowered with the mysterious ability to heal the sick by way of a green fire that shoots from her belly. Simultaneously epic and intimate, wildly imaginative and unexpectedly relevant.
3. Anthem, Ayn Rand
Equality 7-2521 lives in the Dark Ages of the future, where all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, all traces of individualism have been wiped out. But the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in Equality 7-2521, a passion which he has been taught to call sinful. In a purely egalitarian world, he dares to stand forth from the herd — to think and choose for himself, to discover electricity, and to love the woman of his choice. Now he has been marked for death for committing the ultimate sin: in a world where the great “we” reign supreme, he has rediscovered the lost and holy word “I.” This provocative book is an anthem sung in praise of man’s ego.
4. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the
ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
5. The City of Ember, Jeanne Duprau
The city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race. Two hundred years later, the great lamps that light the city are beginning to flicker. When Lina finds part of an ancient message, she’s sure it holds a secret that will save the city. She and her friend Doon must decipher the message before the lights go out on Ember and begin a quest which pushes them outside of the city they’ve known their whole lives.
6. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
In the world of the near future, who will control women’s bodies? 
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.
Books on my need- to-read list:
- The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
- Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Not only is each story a delight, but the threads that unite these stories are more like great big ropes that you could use to rappel out of the second story of your parents’ house on a summer night in the Nevada desert. There really is something about Claire Vaye Watkins’ writing that makes me feel like I am on my own grand adventure. The best part is the book itself, and this isn’t my bookseller talking—this is me the person. 
You know the point in a book that makes you stop and swoon and realize that you are going to love a book? 
We don’t know much of what happened, but in the first few pages of 
Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, and Men’s Journal. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. He lives in Denver.
