Author(s): Patton Oswalt

Humour

A hilarious journey through the world of Patton Oswalt, one of the most creative, insightful, and hysterical voices on the entertainment scene today. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is sort of like a memoir, but more like a collection of hilarity. From a pitch-perfect depiction of an adolescence spent reading everyone from Beverly Cleary to Anthony Burgess to a history of the world as told through internet comments, Oswalt dishes out autobiography and the incredible comedy for which he has become well known. He shares his childhood love of snow days, Dungeons and Dragons, Edgar Allan Poe, and gifts from Grandma that had to be explained. He remembers his teen summers spent working in a movie cineplex and his early years doing standup. Readers are also treated to several graphic comic stories, along with fantastic movie treatments by Oswalt's alter ego Erik Blivens. The book's centrepiece is the title piece, which posits that all young creative minds, before they have anything to write about, hone in on one of three storylines: zombies, spaceships, or wastelands. Oswalt chose wastelands, and ever since he's been mining our society's wasteland-of perversion and excess, pop culture and fatty foods, indie rock and single malt scotch-for the greatest jokes he can find.