Science Fiction
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The Dog Stars (Vintage Contemporaries)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this "end-of-the-world novel more like a rapturous beginning" (San Francisco Chronicle), Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. His gripping story is "an ode to friendship between two men ... the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
Editorial Reviews
A San Francisco Chronicle and Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year
"Extraordinary. . . . One of those books that makes you happy for literature." -Junot Díaz, The Wall Street Journal
"This end-of-the-world novel [is] more like a rapturous beginning. . . . Remarkable." -San Francisco Chronicle
"For all those who thought Cormac McCarthy's The Road the last word on the post-apocalyptic world-think again. . . . Make time and space for this savage, tender, brilliant book." -Glen Duncan, author of The Last Werewolf
"Heart-wrenching and richly written. . . . The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It's an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"A dreamy, postapocalyptic love letter to things of beauty, big and small." –Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
"Heartbreaking" -The Seattle Times
"A brilliant success." -The New Yorker
"Beautifully written and morally challenging" –The Atlantic Monthly
"A book that rests easily on shelves with Dean Koontz, Jack London or Hemingway." -The Missourian
"Dark, poetic, and funny." -Jennifer Reese, NPR
"Terrific. . . . Recalling the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy and the trout-praising beauty of David James Duncan, The Dog Stars makes a compelling case that the wild world will survive the apocalypse just fine; it's the humans who will have the heavy lifting." -Outside
"A post-apocalyptic adventure novel with the soul of haiku." -The Columbus Dispatch
"An elegy for a lost world turns suddenly into a paean to new possibilities. In The Dog Stars, Peter Heller serves up an insightful account of physical, mental, and spiritual survival unfolded in dramatic and often lyrical prose....
"Extraordinary. . . . One of those books that makes you happy for literature." -Junot Díaz, The Wall Street Journal
"This end-of-the-world novel [is] more like a rapturous beginning. . . . Remarkable." -San Francisco Chronicle
"For all those who thought Cormac McCarthy's The Road the last word on the post-apocalyptic world-think again. . . . Make time and space for this savage, tender, brilliant book." -Glen Duncan, author of The Last Werewolf
"Heart-wrenching and richly written. . . . The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It's an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"A dreamy, postapocalyptic love letter to things of beauty, big and small." –Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
"Heartbreaking" -The Seattle Times
"A brilliant success." -The New Yorker
"Beautifully written and morally challenging" –The Atlantic Monthly
"A book that rests easily on shelves with Dean Koontz, Jack London or Hemingway." -The Missourian
"Dark, poetic, and funny." -Jennifer Reese, NPR
"Terrific. . . . Recalling the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy and the trout-praising beauty of David James Duncan, The Dog Stars makes a compelling case that the wild world will survive the apocalypse just fine; it's the humans who will have the heavy lifting." -Outside
"A post-apocalyptic adventure novel with the soul of haiku." -The Columbus Dispatch
"An elegy for a lost world turns suddenly into a paean to new possibilities. In The Dog Stars, Peter Heller serves up an insightful account of physical, mental, and spiritual survival unfolded in dramatic and often lyrical prose....
Readers Top Reviews
GolfermanWebelWeb
Having read the mixed reviews I wasn’t going to purchase this book, but I quite like apocalyptic books, movies etc, so I thought I would give it a go. I am really pleased that I did. At first I thought the ‘writing’ was strange - couldn’t get to grips with ‘is Hig speaking or thinking’, but it did not take long to get used to it and eventually I liked it - it’s refreshingly different. It’s a great story, thought provoking, definitely a realistic scenario. Believable-violence (not Hollywood Rambo), excellent humour (in the right places). Money well spent, hope for a sequel, meanwhile I will try another of the authors books.
A Coconut 🐦Golfe
Beautiful story here, a man living in a post apocalyptic world who takes a risk to break free from his lonely existence with his dog companion. I would give this a solid 5 stars if it weren't for these 2 things... The style of writing - it is really bad literature (I couldn't care less about things like this usually, but this is so obvious and annoying. It makes my failed gcse literature look really good lol), everything is in short sentences, without commas sometimes, and sometimes it feels like it just doesn't make sense... example "They were not even not pros. They were crouched together as one target at this distance one alone filled the scope, way more than filled it. They were farmers insurance men mechanics. Probably. Haplessly clustered. But. I shifted the scope, just the slightest pressure from the inside of my shoulder, and swept them and they had guns, each one." I eventually stopped finding it as irratating once I imagined this is how the man, not the author talks. The second thing, and this isn't much, is the constant references to different guns like saying guns are an AR-10.308, or M4 assault rifle etc. I know nothing about guns so don't know what they look like. Despite these things, i really enjoyed it and think anyone into apocalyptic reads should not give this a miss.
Keith CrawfordA C
This feels a lot like just another US post-apocalyptic novel, replete with slightly dreamy, detached language and a protagonist who helpfully comes complete with a full set of necessary survival skills. There are about twenty thousand versions of this story available on the kindle store for 99 pence – so far so normal, not a bad way to spend an afternoon and that’s all. But then the book does a couple of surprising things. First, it somehow manages to be genuinely life affirming. Often post-apocalyptic books just throw nasty stuff together to show how nasty the apocalypse would be and then the book ends. Job done. Heller weaves everything together to make sense. What seems like just a bunch of stuff happening to a guy waiting to die, actually forms a complete whole where our guy grows. One might even go so far as to say a novel. And a novel with a happy ending that makes you happy. If this sounds like I’m making a big deal out of nothing, then remember this is a book about the world ending. And what you do next. Second, the important relationships don’t turn out to be the ones you think they are – or how you think they are – or… well, I guess I’m saying that the people and the relationships surprise you. The characters are much more complete than they initially seem to be, and that happens in a completely natural way. The lead character, who I found alienating on unlikeable, grows into something more alongside the people he meets, and one relationship in particular has turned on its head by the end of the book. I still don’t really like the style and it still cuts a little too close to all the other post-apocalyptic novels out there (I’m aware there are plenty of people who like this much more than I) – this is no The Road. But it grows on you as it goes along, and it achieves something that genre rarely manages: it makes you feel better about the human race.
OtterprodsHayley
I really disliked this book. Why? (1) Full of f bombs and a lot of other profanity (2) Horrible writing style. Like he wrote it on a phone as text message. And. Annoying as @%#$@$@. <---- that's actually a made up sample of the awful writing. (3) 50% complete and the only sort of character growth is his dog died (4) Did I mention the relentless profanity and horrible writing? This is the worst book I've read in years. Did not finish.
TipsWithALipOtter
It is hard for me to describe the power of this book, and I was surprised just now when I rated the mood of this post-apocalyptic story as "hopeful." But, in its odd, idiosyncratic and special way, I think it is. Even though the journey to that point of hope is a real doozy. When I read this book, I was reminded of Tolstoy's line - "There is nothing great where truth, simplicity, and beauty are not present." This book hits all three, although they come in atypical and, at times, devastating forms. There are passages in this book that are more beautiful, more achingly honest, about true loss than almost anything else I have read, and they are all the more powerful because of the poetic simplicity of the prose, the sparing and economical word choice - the feeling you get that if anything else was said, it would not only be nonessential or redundant, it could finally crush the spirit beyond the possibility of recovery. This book reminds you that the end of the world is not only a subjective expression but a completely subjective feeling; for some, the end is not real at all, for some the end happens nearly immediately, and for a few, the end doesn't happen until the person they are is gone and the reason for continuing to struggle to live is merely due to "curiosity." A chilling reason, but perhaps accurate. The mundane everyday drudgery is punctuated by sudden moments of pure horror, disgust, and savagery. During the span of one evening reading this book, I nearly vomited and then later cried harder than I would like to admit. Some have complained about the clipped, stream-of-consciousness style of storytelling, but I think that is apropos for this tale. After all, when the end comes for the world and pretty much everyone is gone, what else would you have to hear, or listen to, than your own thoughts? If all civilization came to a shuddering stop, what would enable the survivors to survive long-term? Would it be the homicidal ape that we are, the ability to kill and trap resources the most effectively, or would it be the better angels of our nature? Would it be the willingness to drop the gun, drop the sword, even if we had every reason to shoot or stab? What would really keep us alive? Perhaps more important, what would make us want to keep living? I hope you have as rewarding an experience reading this book as I did. It will crush you, it will disturb you, but it will also lift you up- maybe you will even soar.
Short Excerpt Teaser
i
I keep the Beast running, I keep the 100 low lead on tap, I foresee attacks. I am young enough, I am old enough. I used to love to fish for trout more than almost anything.
My name is Hig, one name. Big Hig if you need another.
If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I'm not saying I did, it's because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one.
The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the whale (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn't cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water.
Melissa, my wife, was an old hippy. Not that old. She looked good. In this story she might have been Eve, but I'm not Adam. I am more like Cain. They didn't have a brother like me.
Did you ever read the Bible? I mean sit down and read it like it was a book? Check out Lamentations. That's where we're at, pretty much. Pretty much lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water.
They said at the end it would get colder after it gets warmer. Way colder. Still waiting. She's a surprise this old earth, one big surprise after another since before she separated from the moon who circles and circles like the mate of a shot goose.
No more geese. A few. Last October I heard the old bleating after dusk and saw them, five against the cold bloodwashed blue over the ridge. Five all fall, I think, next April none.
I hand pump the 100 low lead aviation gas out of the old airport tank when the sun is not shining, and I have the truck too that was making the fuel delivery. More fuel than the Beast can burn in my lifetime if I keep my sorties local, which I plan to, I have to. She's a small plane, a 1956 Cessna 182, really a beaut. Cream and blue. I'm figuring I'm dead before the Beast gives up the final ghost. I will buy the farm. Eighty acres of bottomland hay and corn in a country where there is still a cold stream coming out of the purple mountains full of brookies and cuts.
Before that I will make my roundtrips. Out and back.
*
I have a neighbor. One. Just us at a small country airport a few miles from the mountains. A training field where they built a bunch of houses for people who couldn't sleep without their little planes, the way golfers live on a golf course. Bangley is the name on the registration of his old truck, which doesn't run anymore. Bruce Bangley. I fished it out of the glove box looking for a tire pressure gauge I could take with me in the Beast. A Wheat Ridge address. I don't call him that, though, what's the point, there's only two of us. Only us for at least a radius of eight miles, which is the distance of open prairie to the first juniper woods on the skirt of the mountain. I just say, Hey. Above the juniper is oak brush then black timber. Well, brown. Beetle killed and droughted. A lot of it standing dead now, just swaying like a thousand skeletons, sighing like a thousand ghosts, but not all. There are patches of green woods, and I am their biggest fan. I root for them out here on the plain. Go Go Go Grow Grow Grow! That's our fight song. I yell it out the window as I fly low over. The green patches are spreading year by year. Life is tenacious if you give it one little bit of encouragement. I could swear they hear me. They wave back, wave their feathery arms back and forth down low by their sides, they remind me of women in kimonos. Tiny steps or no steps, wave wave hands at your sides.
I go up there on foot when I can. To the greener woods. Funny to say that: not like I have to clear my calendar. I go up to breathe. The different air. It's dangerous, it's an adrenalin rush I could do without. I have seen elk sign. Not so old. If there are still elk. Bangley says no way. Way, but. Never seen one. Seen plenty deer. I bring the .308 and I shoot a doe and I drag her back in the hull of a kayak which I sawed the deck off so it's a sled. My green sled. The deer just stayed on with the rabbits and the rats. The cheat grass stayed on, I guess that's enough.
Before I go up there I fly it twice. One day, one night with the goggles. The goggles are pretty good at seeing down through trees if the trees aren't too heavy. People make pulsing green shadows, even asleep. Better than not checking. Then I make a loop south and east, come back in from the north. Thirty miles out, at least a day for a traveler. That's all open, all plains, sage and grass and rabbit brush and the old farms. The brown circles of fields like the footprint of a crutch fading into the prairie. Hedgerows and windbreaks, half the trees broken, blown over, a few still green by a seep or along a creek. Then I tell Bangley.
I cover the...
I keep the Beast running, I keep the 100 low lead on tap, I foresee attacks. I am young enough, I am old enough. I used to love to fish for trout more than almost anything.
My name is Hig, one name. Big Hig if you need another.
If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I'm not saying I did, it's because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one.
The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the whale (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn't cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water.
Melissa, my wife, was an old hippy. Not that old. She looked good. In this story she might have been Eve, but I'm not Adam. I am more like Cain. They didn't have a brother like me.
Did you ever read the Bible? I mean sit down and read it like it was a book? Check out Lamentations. That's where we're at, pretty much. Pretty much lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water.
They said at the end it would get colder after it gets warmer. Way colder. Still waiting. She's a surprise this old earth, one big surprise after another since before she separated from the moon who circles and circles like the mate of a shot goose.
No more geese. A few. Last October I heard the old bleating after dusk and saw them, five against the cold bloodwashed blue over the ridge. Five all fall, I think, next April none.
I hand pump the 100 low lead aviation gas out of the old airport tank when the sun is not shining, and I have the truck too that was making the fuel delivery. More fuel than the Beast can burn in my lifetime if I keep my sorties local, which I plan to, I have to. She's a small plane, a 1956 Cessna 182, really a beaut. Cream and blue. I'm figuring I'm dead before the Beast gives up the final ghost. I will buy the farm. Eighty acres of bottomland hay and corn in a country where there is still a cold stream coming out of the purple mountains full of brookies and cuts.
Before that I will make my roundtrips. Out and back.
*
I have a neighbor. One. Just us at a small country airport a few miles from the mountains. A training field where they built a bunch of houses for people who couldn't sleep without their little planes, the way golfers live on a golf course. Bangley is the name on the registration of his old truck, which doesn't run anymore. Bruce Bangley. I fished it out of the glove box looking for a tire pressure gauge I could take with me in the Beast. A Wheat Ridge address. I don't call him that, though, what's the point, there's only two of us. Only us for at least a radius of eight miles, which is the distance of open prairie to the first juniper woods on the skirt of the mountain. I just say, Hey. Above the juniper is oak brush then black timber. Well, brown. Beetle killed and droughted. A lot of it standing dead now, just swaying like a thousand skeletons, sighing like a thousand ghosts, but not all. There are patches of green woods, and I am their biggest fan. I root for them out here on the plain. Go Go Go Grow Grow Grow! That's our fight song. I yell it out the window as I fly low over. The green patches are spreading year by year. Life is tenacious if you give it one little bit of encouragement. I could swear they hear me. They wave back, wave their feathery arms back and forth down low by their sides, they remind me of women in kimonos. Tiny steps or no steps, wave wave hands at your sides.
I go up there on foot when I can. To the greener woods. Funny to say that: not like I have to clear my calendar. I go up to breathe. The different air. It's dangerous, it's an adrenalin rush I could do without. I have seen elk sign. Not so old. If there are still elk. Bangley says no way. Way, but. Never seen one. Seen plenty deer. I bring the .308 and I shoot a doe and I drag her back in the hull of a kayak which I sawed the deck off so it's a sled. My green sled. The deer just stayed on with the rabbits and the rats. The cheat grass stayed on, I guess that's enough.
Before I go up there I fly it twice. One day, one night with the goggles. The goggles are pretty good at seeing down through trees if the trees aren't too heavy. People make pulsing green shadows, even asleep. Better than not checking. Then I make a loop south and east, come back in from the north. Thirty miles out, at least a day for a traveler. That's all open, all plains, sage and grass and rabbit brush and the old farms. The brown circles of fields like the footprint of a crutch fading into the prairie. Hedgerows and windbreaks, half the trees broken, blown over, a few still green by a seep or along a creek. Then I tell Bangley.
I cover the...
