In Brian Francis Slattery’s novel, Lost Everything, which won the 2012 Philip K. Dick award, two friends, Reverend Bauxite and Sunny Jim, travel on a mission up the Susquehanna River, in an apocalyptic, not-too-distant future, in which climate change and civil war have transformed the Northeast into a tropical wasteland, replete with monkeys climbing over post-industrial ruins.

Slattery and I discuss the canoe trip he took along the Susquehanna with two biologist friends to research the book; his discussions with a religious friend that helped shape the novel, which he says he wrote so that it could yield both secular and religious readings; and his work as a journalist, which provided insight into the human and material costs of war. 

We also compare notes on the apocalyptic in popular culture. After all, this series started with a simple question, “are zombies a coping mechanism for the apocalypse?”