I was 11 the first time I stared down the barrel of the apocalypse. I was on a camping trip, and for the long bus ride to the site I’d brought along a book called Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, a doorstop of a novel about a comet that slams into the Earth, unleashing untold havoc around the globe and forcing what remains of humanity into a desperate struggle for survival. By the time I came home from the trip I was shaken to the core, living in stark terror of what might be out there in the cosmos on its way to kill us all.

Ever since then I’ve harbored a perverse fascination with end-of-the-world stories, from the Revelation of St. John to Alas Babylon. I even watch Armageddon with Bruce Willis whenever it comes on, even though it’s truly an awful, awful movie. I’m not alone in this, of course. The idea of an ultimate cataclysm that wipes us out has spawned countless cults, movements and bad entertainments for millennia. We just got over Y2K - and, I must say, we faced that crisis somewhat less than heroically - and now we’re waiting for 2012, when the Mayan calendar says we’re all going to be toast.

May as Well Read Up: While you’re waiting for the universe to kill you, let me recommend a joyful horrorshow of a book called Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End... by Philip Plait (Penguin, 2008). Plait, a former professor of astronomy, takes us on a tour of the infinite span of deadliness out there, from asteroids and comets on a collision course with the inconvenient obstacle on which we live to the trillion-mile wide blasts of gamma radiation that erupt from the formation of black holes. With the kind of nihilistic glee that only a true science geek can muster, Plait illustrates our world’s various possible ends in loving detail and then tells us whether or not we really need to worry about them. Cosmic rays obliterating the ozone layer? Check. Solar flare wiping out all power on the planet? Check. Alien bacteria Andromeda Straining us all into extinction? Check and double-check.

Actually Plait’s book uses our rampant fears of space-borne doom to give us a fascinating introduction to astronomy and cosmology, explaining the hard science of astrophysics and quantum mechanics in a novice-friendly way and painting a picture of a wild, chaotic and wondrous universe in the same way Carl Sagan used to do on TV. Going beyond the immediacy of killer asteroids and space invaders, Plait guides us through a future history of our sun as it dies, billions of years from now, and a look back at the amazing processes that occurred during the first few seconds following the Big Bang. He describes cannibal galaxies (like ours) which eat smaller ones and postulates the incredible effects of a black hole half an inch wide, of which there may be many out there, as it comes in contact with Earth - spoiler alert: nobody lives happily ever after.

Along the way, Plait tells us about the efforts of folks like the B612 Foundation, a thinktank devoted to solving our potential space-rock problem, and others who are working to save us from all the cosmic death. The best thing the rest of us can do is keep ourselves informed and rational with good science, like Philip Plait’s remarkable book. But just in case, let me point out to anyone out there with a bunker and a stockpile that book critics will be absolutely indispensable after the apocalypse.

Really.

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Madoffed: “’This is the even-handed dealing of the world,’ he said. ’There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.’” This is the young Ebenezer Scrooge talking, in Ghost-induced flashback, as his girlfriend Belle is giving him the big kissoff for becoming such a materialistic asshole. While we can sympathize with Belle, what Scrooge says is absolutely true. The last year has been a good example of this, as investment bankers and Wall Street mad-dogs, accustomed as they were to being the alpha studs of the free-market economy, have suddenly found themselves vilified like Marie Antoinette just for doing what they understood to be their jobs. Don’t get me wrong. Speaking as a longtime class warrior, the backlash of the nation couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of guys. It’s just that we shouldn’t always confuse the desire for wealth with the sleazy tactics some have taken to attain it.

Case in point is Alexandra Penney, former editor-in-chief of Self magazine and author of the bestselling sex manual How to Make Love to a Man. Recently Penney, who stopped writing to return to her first love, painting, posted a blog that revealed that she had been punked out of her entire life savings by Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. As she describes the shock of learning that Madoff had wiped her out (though one wonders why she didn’t diversify more), Penney bemoans the fact that she’s going to have to let the cleaning lady go, sell the West Palm Beach cottage, give up on her exotic travel and her Hermes purses, and go back to work. She then describes taking her first subway ride in 30 years and having to be shown how to buy a pass. The response, predictably, was less than charitable. While there was some sympathy in reader responses, Penney was stunned by the “vitriol” of most of her feedback. People welcomed her to the real world, told her politely and not so politely that she had nothing to bitch about, called her a princess and worse.

Now, while I myself find it hard to feel for Penney here - a bit more empathy for others taken by Madoff and a bit less self-pity about having to iron one’s own shirts would have helped - she doesn’t deserve the same kind of up-yours we should be giving to Madoff or the executives at AIG, for two reasons. First is that Penney’s money was her own, earned from writing, and writing is always an honest living (even writing crap).

Second, and most important, is that the success of any author is good for all of us, particularly those of us who read fiction. Fiction is a liability for most publishers, as only 2 percent of the American public reads more than two books a year, and most of those books are not them ones what’s got made-up stories in ’em. The majority of novels barely break even in sales, and it’s only through the sales of big-box authors that fiction remains on the market at all. Scholastic Books, for example, was on the verge of bankruptcy when it acquired American publishing rights to the Harry Potter books - the company lives and breathes on J. K. Rowling’s dime. A rising tide lifts all boats, and every Da Vinci Code or Oprah’s Book Club selection keeps the rest of us in the books we love. Every ostentatious author photo of Clive Cussler with one of his classic cars or Danielle Steel reclining beneath a life-size portrait of herself means that the work of other, better authors sees the light of day. Alexandra Penney is another such case, and honestly, would you take the subway if you didn’t have to?

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In Another Damn Memoriam: At the risk of turning this column into the Flagpole obituary page, I must note the passing of another fine author. Donald E. Westlake, one of the great craftsmen of the crime novel, passed away from a heart attack on New Year’s Eve while vacationing in Mexico. While Westlake’s name may be largely unknown outside the mystery community, within it he was one of the hardboiled genre’s rock stars, a prolific writer who often published four or more books a year under various pseudonyms as well as under his own name from the ’60s to the present, and an unarguable influence on everyone who’s ventured into crime noir since. Even if you didn’t know Westlake, you’ve encountered him. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for The Grifters with John Cusack and Anjelica Huston (and few people on Earth could have done such justice to Jim Thompson’s novel). Under the name Richard Stark, he wrote a brilliant series starring his coolly efficient antihero Parker, the first of which was filmed twice, as Point Blank with Lee Marvin and as Payback, the best film in Mel Gibson’s resumé. Westlake’s books are hard to come by these days, but they’re worth a trip down to Jackson Street Books. Get some, read them, and keep them on your shelf next to John D. McDonald and Elmore Leonard. He was that good.

John G. Nettles