Heller, Peter
Entry updated 7 September 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) US journalist and author whose first four books are nonfiction adventures mostly dealing with expeditions to various extremities of the planet; his first novel, The Dog Stars (2012), is set in a Near Future America devastated by a flu-based Pandemic and finished off by an auto-immune disorder. The protagonist, who is a pilot, lies low near Denver with a Survivalist buddy who has a habit of killing intruders, until he picks up a radio message, which he traces in his Cessna. En route to a shoot-out with some even more savage survivalists, the tale – in which Heller takes sensitive advantage of his rural Colorado setting – suggests that the world may give solace to those placed to survive the kind of planetary Disaster here rather uneasily depicted. A certain dis-ease with this initiating premise marks Heller as a Mainstream Writer of SF, and unwise comparisons of this tale to Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) only underline his disinclination to see the dark side of the end of civilization. The novel was filmed as The Dog Stars (2026) directed by Ridley Scott. [JC]
Peter Heller
born New York: 13 February 1959
works (selected)
- The Dog Stars (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2012) [hb/]
links
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