Andy Buchanan / Alamy I have been a fan of apocalyptic sci-fi since I was hooked as a teenager by the 1950s classic The Day of the Triffids, by UK author John Wyndham. Rather than putting me off, the covid-19 pandemic has actually fed my appetite for end-of-the-world tale. That is because the past year has shown us in real life, though on a lesser scale, how we face global threats and whether authorities will ride roughshod over civil liberties to save lives overall. But from deadly plagues to nuclear armageddon and oncoming asteroids, I thought I had heard all the different ways civilisation could be doomed, but Andy Weir, author of