The best books to prove the apocalypse can still be fun

The Stupidest Angel is a fun Christmas romp complete with zombies, murder, and mayhem. The best part about this book is that Moore revisits one of the craziest places ever imagined: Pine Cove, CA. A little Night of the Living Dead with a little Our Town, and every B-movie with a hot babe wielding a sword, Moore twisted several elements into a crazed train wreck that starts at a sprint and never lets up. I enjoy how he entwines characters and plotlines of Pine Cove with those from his other novels, creating a universe in which all of his gems coexist and interact regardless of their themes or even their time in history. Looking for a Christmas story that won’t be like any other you’ve read; The Stupidest Angel won’t disappoint.

Vonnegut was a master storyteller whose dim view of the world and its human inhabitants was informed by his experience as a WWII POW in Dresden, Germany and enduring the deadly firebombing of the city at war’s end. Cat’s Cradle, like all of his novels, is a critical portrayal of the human condition as depicted by his characters which often are more important than the actual story. Ice-Nine, in the wrong or perhaps the right hands, has the potential to end all existence on earth. Vonnegut, through his characters, debates what the right course should be.

Credited as an early existentialist despite his own objections to the label, Albert Camus’ The Plague is a quintessential example of an existentialist’s view of human behaviour and the willingness to accept the responsibility for one’s action or inaction. Set in Oran, Algeria shortly after the end of WWII, The Plague tells the story of a population quarantined from the world due to a deadly outbreak of bubonic plagues. Camus examines human responses to calamity when limits are stressed and then broken through isolation and loss. His characters are a motley assemblage of public servants, clergy, and simple people who assume disparate roles that are sometimes admirable and sometimes despicable—just like in real life.

Zeus is Undead is a sequel to the playful Zeus is Dead and is equally as clever and entertaining. I’m a sucker for great story-telling and building a narrative around the history of Greek myths got my attention. In the previous story, Zeus’ death meant his longstanding order of maintaining distance and no interference between the gods and the world of the mortals evaporated, leading to fun mischief and the introduction of gods, demi-gods, and mythic monsters into our modern world. Zeus is Undead goes further by adding zombies into the mix. Just a lot of fun.

Don Reardon crafts a tale of utter isolation and deprivation. Set in a remote Alaskan village that is suddenly and remorselessly struck with a virulent and deadly strain of influenza or some other similar malady. Quarantined from the rest of Alaska and the world, most of the inhabitants die from the illness leaving the survivors the grim, brutal task of surviving by whatever means possible. With no food coming into the village and winter firmly set upon them, living or dying becomes a question of what people are willing to do for and to one another.