All that stands between us and extinction is a middle school kid. Who’s taking bets?
Summary Of The Series (so as to pique your interest so you’ll want more!)
Christopher Alan was just trying to survive seventh grade. Then aliens showed up and raised the bar considerably. In the span of one morning he went from dodging bully jocks to rescuing his teacher from a collapsing building, losing his little sister to an energy strike, and raiding his Marine dad’s gun safe to start fighting back. By Book 2 he’s been scooped up by a volatile alien named Visquisor and is representing humanity across the galaxy whether he volunteered for the job or not. A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth is a hilarious, heartbreaking, and wildly imaginative YA sci-fi series about a 12-year-old computer prodigy who keeps accidentally becoming the most important person in the universe — and is extremely annoyed about it.
THE BOOKS OF THE TEENAGER’S GUIDE TO SAVING EARTH SERIES
Book 1: An Apocalypse and Then Some
Book 2: How to Survive Surviving the Apocalypse
Book 3: Is This Apocalypse Over Yet?
The A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth Series is intended to be read by all. It is science fiction that is directed at both the Adult and the Young Adult markets. It is appropriate for teenagers down to, say, 14 years of age. It will also be enjoyed immensely by those over the age of 100. Oh, and those in between too ; )
The Series Synopsis (Or as in elementary school, my book report for the series. Here you go, Mrs. Blum)
Christopher Alan’s first day of seventh grade was already a catastrophe before the alien invasion started. Late slip, mom announcing his nickname to the entire student body, the bully gauntlet outside Computer Science class — the usual. Then straight bolts of energy began leveling Spokane, his teacher froze in a corner too terrified to move, and Christopher — a nerdy, awkward, Python-programming twelve-year-old — had to decide who he was going to be. He went back for her. That decision changed everything.
Within hours the world Christopher knew was gone. His little sister’s school took a direct hit. His grandfather was killed in his driveway. The adult world — governments, militaries, anyone who was supposed to be in charge — had completely collapsed. What was left was Christopher: armed with his Marine dad’s rifle, his own frightening intelligence, and a growing conviction that if nobody else was going to fix this, he would. By Book 2, a powerful and deeply unpredictable alien named Visquisor has taken him off-world, and Christopher finds himself acting as humanity’s unwilling galactic representative — navigating alien courts, deadly waystations, and a being who oscillates between childlike warmth and planet-destroying fury, sometimes in the same conversation.
Sharp, funny, and emotionally honest, A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth is a series that takes its young hero seriously without ever losing its sense of humor. Christopher is not a superhero, a chosen one, or a destined savior — he’s a kid who keeps showing up and refusing to quit, in a universe that keeps raising the stakes. These books are for every teenager who’s ever felt underestimated, overwhelmed, and absolutely certain they could do a better job than the adults running things.
Tropes and Genres of A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth Series
The Unlikely Hero — Christopher is a socially awkward, bullied computer nerd. He has zero combat training, zero social capital, and zero business saving the world. He does it anyway.
Competence Porn — Watching a twelve-year-old out-think, out-adapt, and out-maneuver everyone around him — including alien beings of tremendous power — is deeply satisfying.
Adults Are Useless — The principal yells “duck and cover.” The president can’t control his own staff. The teacher freezes in a corner. Christopher is repeatedly the most functional person in the room.
Ordinary World Shattered — The series opens in the most relatable YA setting possible (first day of middle school, crushing social anxiety) before detonating it completely. The contrast is intentional and devastating.
The Mentor Who Needs Saving — Grace Chang, Christopher’s beloved Computer Science teacher, is brilliant and kind — and completely falls apart under pressure. Christopher saves her, not the other way around.
Real Loss, No Take-Backs — Christopher’s little sister dies. His grandfather dies. The series doesn’t walk it back. Grief is part of what makes him who he becomes.
Fish Out of Water — Yanked from Earth and deposited aboard an alien vessel, Christopher must navigate a galaxy he knows nothing about, with almost no help and almost no information.
The Volatile Mentor / Captor — Visquisor is funny, brilliant, terrifying, and utterly unpredictable. He’s not a villain, not a guardian — he’s something stranger and more compelling than either.
Chosen (Against His Will) — Christopher didn’t raise his hand. The universe picked him anyway. His ongoing exasperation about this is one of the series’ greatest sources of humor.
Humor as Armor — Christopher processes trauma, fear, and impossible situations through relentless internal sarcasm. It’s funny. It’s also clearly how a smart, grieving kid stays functional.
The Nerd Wins — Programming, pattern recognition, clear thinking under pressure — the skills that made Christopher a target in the school hallway are the exact skills that keep him alive and make him indispensable.
Coming of Age at the Worst Possible Time — Christopher is navigating all the ordinary horrors of early adolescence (girls, identity, belonging, self-worth) at the exact same time as the extraordinary horrors of alien apocalypse. The series never lets him forget either.
A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth is Craig Robertson’s irreverent take on the end of the world — a YA science fiction series that throws ordinary teenagers into an alien apocalypse and dares them to survive it with nothing but quick wits, bad timing, and a stubborn refusal to take any of it seriously. It’s funny, fast-paced, and unapologetically silly about a situation that really shouldn’t be funny at all — perfect for readers who want their apocalypse with a side of sarcasm.
An Apocalypse And Then Some
A Middle Grade Science Fiction Apocalypse Adventure
YA Science Fiction Adventure by Craig Robertson
a Post Apocalyptic Voyage With A Twist!
It’s Chris’s 1st of 7th Grade. Anxiety and Peer Pressure Await Him. But So Does an Alien Invasion! A Teenager. Angst. Aliens. It’s Going to Get Messy! YA Science Fiction Apocalypse — Chris finds first love, battles a robot invasion, and becomes a hero.
More info →
How to Survive Surviving the Apocalypse
The Dostivex invaders are gone. Earth is free. And Christopher Alan — thirteen, sarcastic, and operating a captured alien spacecraft with no flight training — has absolutely no idea what comes next.
What comes next, it turns out, is worse. A new fleet of alien ships materializes in orbit and parks directly above his location. The president can’t get out of his bunker. The only functioning government is too busy misidentifying insect species to be useful. And Christopher, armed with a telepathic AI and an increasingly inconvenient sense of responsibility, is being treated as humanity’s unofficial representative to the rest of the galaxy.
He did not raise his hand for this.
How To Survive Surviving the Apocalypse is the fast, funny, emotionally honest second book in Craig Robertson’s A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth — because nobody tells you that the apocalypse doesn’t actually end when you win.
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Is This Apocalypse Over Yet?
Christopher Alan didn’t ask to be taken off-world. He didn’t agree to be Visquisor’s personal diplomat, social experiment, or — though he doesn’t know it yet — his most promising candidate for a soul transplant.
Visquisor has lived for ten thousand millennia and felt nothing for most of them. He has power, ships, and a galaxy of terrified underlings. What he doesn’t have is any reason to keep going — unless he can find a way to transfer his dying essence into someone worth inhabiting. Someone young. Someone alive in all the ways he isn’t. Someone like Christopher.
In the meantime, they’re heading to Dez Falls — a poisoned, protein-fogged nightmare planet where the only thing being mined is Bliss Shale, the most addictive and deadly substance in the known galaxy. The only thing standing between Christopher and a paradise he’ll never wake up from is a weapons-grade alien mechanic who really doesn’t want to be there either.
Is This Apocalypse Over Yet? is Book 3 of Craig Robertson’s A Teenager’s Guide to Saving the Earth — where the enemy turns out to be loneliness, the prize is a soul, and the hero is a fourteen-year-old who just wants to go home.
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