The Dog Stars

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RIDLEY SCOTT AND STARRING JACOB ELORDI, MARGARET QUALLEY, AND JOSH BROLIN • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The River: 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.

Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men's Journal, and a frequent contributor to Businessweek. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. He lives in Denver. Heller was born and raised in New York. He attended high school in Vermont and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker. He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru.At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, he won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem "The Psalms of Malvine." He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, logger, offshore fisherman, kayak instructor, river guide, and world class pizza deliverer. Some of these stories can be found in Set Free in China, Sojourns on the Edge. In the winter of 2002 he joined, on the ground team, the most ambitious whitewater expedition in history as it made its way through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. He chronicled what has been called The Last Great Adventure Prize for Outside, and in his book Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.

The gorge -- three times deeper than the Grand Canyon -- is sacred to Buddhists, and is the inspiration for James Hilton's Shangri La. It is so deep there are tigers and leopards in the bottom and raging 25,000 foot peaks at the top, and so remote and difficult to traverse that a mythical waterfall, sought by explorers since Victorian times, was documented for the first time in 1998 by a team from National Geographic.

The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, was number three on Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" of all pop culture, and a Denver Post review ranked it "up there with any adventure writing ever written."

In December, 2005, on assignment for National Geographic Adventure, he joined the crew of an eco-pirate ship belonging to the radical environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it sailed to Antarctica to hunt down and disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.

The ship is all black, sails under a jolly Roger, and two days south of Tasmania the engineers came on deck and welded a big blade called the Can Opener to the bow--a weapon designed to gut the hulls of ships. In The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals, Heller recounts fierce gales, forty foot seas, rammings, near-sinkings, and a committed crew's clear-eyed willingness to die to save a whale. The book was published by Simon and Schuster's Free Press in September, 2007.

In the fall of 2007 Heller was invited by the team who made the acclaimed film The Cove to accompany them in a clandestine filming mission into the guarded dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan. Heller paddled into the inlet with four other surfers while a pod of pilot whales was being slaughtered. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and the terrible footage can be seen in the movie. The Cove went on to win an Academy Award. Heller wrote about the experience for Men's Journal.

Heller's most recent memoir, about surfing from California down the coast of Mexico, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, was published by The Free Press in 2010. Can a man drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and, apprenticing himself to local masters, learn to ride a big, fast wave in six months? Can he learn to finally love and commit to someone else? Can he care for the oceans, which are in crisis? The answers are in. The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, which called it a "powerful memoir...about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." It also won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature.

Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is a haunting and deeply human post-apocalyptic novel about survival, loneliness, friendship, grief, and the stubborn hope of finding a reason to keep living after civilization has collapsed. Set in a future America devastated by a deadly pandemic, the novel follows Hig, a former pilot who has survived the catastrophe and now lives in a remote airfield in Colorado. The world he once knew has disappeared, leaving behind empty towns, abandoned buildings, scarce resources, and the constant threat of violence. Yet beneath its survival story, the novel is ultimately about what it means to remain human when almost everything that once gave life meaning has been taken away.

Hig lives with his dog, Jasper, and a heavily armed and emotionally hardened man named Bangley. The three form an unusual survival unit. Hig provides a gentler, more reflective presence, while Bangley is suspicious, aggressive, and constantly prepared for danger. Their relationship is not based on friendship in the traditional sense. They frequently disagree, and Hig sometimes finds Bangley difficult to tolerate. Yet they depend on one another. Bangley protects their home and supplies, while Hig flies their small airplane and keeps watch over the surrounding area. Their survival depends on a balance between Bangley’s violence and Hig’s remaining sense of compassion.

The pandemic has changed everything. Most people have died, and those who remain are scattered across a dangerous landscape. There are no functioning institutions to provide protection, no dependable stores or hospitals, and no normal social structure. Every trip away from the airfield carries risk. Hig and Bangley have learned that strangers cannot automatically be trusted because desperation can turn ordinary people into threats. Their lives are therefore governed by vigilance. They watch the roads, conserve supplies, maintain their weapons, and prepare for the possibility that someone might attack them.

Despite this harsh reality, Hig refuses to become completely hardened. His relationship with Jasper is especially important because the dog gives him companionship and affection in a world where human relationships have largely disappeared. Jasper represents loyalty and uncomplicated love. Taking care of him gives Hig a reason to follow a routine and continue looking toward tomorrow. Through Jasper, the novel shows how even a small bond can become enormously important when loneliness dominates everyday life.

Flying is another source of meaning for Hig. His airplane allows him to escape the narrow boundaries of his isolated existence and explore the surrounding region. During these flights, he searches for signs of life and listens to radio transmissions. He also observes the landscape from above, seeing the remains of a world that has largely vanished. The act of flying gives him a sense of freedom that is almost impossible to experience on the ground. It connects him to his former life while also giving him the possibility of discovering something new.

One of the novel’s central tensions comes from the contrast between Hig and Bangley. Bangley believes survival depends primarily on suspicion, strength, and the willingness to kill before being killed. Hig understands the necessity of defending themselves, but he cannot completely accept Bangley’s worldview. He still wants to believe that people can cooperate, that kindness matters, and that life should be more than simply staying alive. Their disagreements represent two different responses to catastrophe. One response is to become harder and more defensive; the other is to preserve enough humanity to continue believing that life can have meaning.

Hig’s radio listening eventually gives him a reason to hope. He hears a voice coming from a distant location, suggesting that there may be another functioning community or group of survivors somewhere beyond the isolated world he knows. The signal becomes more than a technical discovery. It becomes evidence that the world may not be completely dead. Hig begins to wonder whether there are still people out there who are building something, communicating, and attempting to live rather than merely survive.

This possibility changes his outlook. For a long time, Hig has existed in a state of emotional suspension. He has survived, but he has not truly moved forward. The loss of his wife and the destruction of his former life have left him carrying profound grief. The distant radio signal awakens a desire that he has tried to suppress: the desire for human connection. He wants to know whether there is still a place where he can belong.

The journey toward that possibility becomes both a physical and emotional adventure. Hig must leave behind the relative safety of his familiar environment and confront the uncertainty of what lies beyond it. His journey forces him to make choices about trust, risk, and the kind of person he wants to remain. The dangers are real, but so is the possibility that life might contain something more than fear and isolation.

Heller’s writing style contributes strongly to the novel’s atmosphere. The prose is spare, fragmented, and sensory, reflecting Hig’s state of mind and the broken world around him. The story does not always explain events in a conventional way. Instead, readers experience the world through Hig’s memories, observations, thoughts, and immediate perceptions. This creates a dreamlike quality while also making the physical environment feel vivid. The silence of the landscape, the sound of an airplane engine, the presence of animals, the changing weather, and the remains of human civilization all become important parts of the story.

Grief is another major theme. Hig has lost almost everything: his wife, his old way of life, his friends, and the ordinary future he once expected to have. Yet his grief does not disappear simply because survival becomes the immediate priority. The novel shows that surviving a catastrophe does not automatically mean recovering from it. Hig must carry his memories while trying to create a future. His emotional struggle is therefore as important as his physical struggle.

At its heart, The Dog Stars asks whether survival alone is enough. Hig has food, shelter, weapons, an airplane, and a loyal dog, but these things cannot completely satisfy his need for connection and purpose. The novel suggests that human beings need more than physical safety. They need companionship, beauty, trust, memory, and the possibility of a future. Even in a devastated world, the desire to love and belong remains powerful.

Ultimately, The Dog Stars is not simply a story about the end of civilization. It is a story about what might remain after civilization ends. Peter Heller explores the fragile qualities that make life worth protecting: loyalty, friendship, compassion, love, curiosity, and hope. Hig’s journey demonstrates that courage is not only the ability to fight or survive. Sometimes courage means risking disappointment, opening oneself to other people, and believing that something meaningful may still exist beyond the horizon. In a world where nearly everything has been destroyed, the decision to keep hoping becomes an act of survival in its own right.