Until the Last Dog Dies

By Robert Guffey

What happens when all humor is wiped off the face of the Earth? Around the world, an unusual viral plague is striking the population. The virus attacks only one particular section of the brain. It isn’t fatal, but it results in the victim’s sense of humor being obliterated. No one is immune. Elliot Greeley, a young stand-up comedian starving his way through alternative comedy clubs in Los Angeles, isn’t even certain the virus is real at first. But as the pandemic begins to eat away at the very heart of civilization itself, the virus affects Elliot and his close knit group of comedian friends in increasingly personal ways. What would you consider the end of the world? Until the Last Dog Dies is a sharp, cutting satire, both a clever twist on apocalyptic fiction and a poignant look at the things that make us human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Night Shade Books
• Release date: Nov 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781597806213

Robert Guffey

Robert Guffey is a lecturer in the Department of English at California State University – Long Beach. His most recent books are Widow of the Amputation and Other Weird Crimes (Eraserhead Press, 2021) and Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Crossroad Press, 2021). Guffey’s previous books include the darkly satirical, apocalyptic novel Until the Last Dog Dies (Night Shade/Skyhorse, 2017), the journalistic memoir Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security (OR Books, 2015), which Flavorwire called, “By many miles, the weirdest and funniest book of [the year],” the novella collection Spies & Saucers (PS Publishing, 2014), and Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form (2012). A graduate of the famed Clarion Writers Workshop in Seattle, he has written for numerous publications, among them The Believer, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, The Evergreen Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Mailer Review, Phantom Drift, Postscripts, Rosebud, Salon, The Third Alternative, and TOR.com.