Blood's a Rover

I have been a fan of Harlan since discovering his work in the early 60's and coming across works such as "Ellison Wonderland", "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream" were nothing more than brilliant lights in a atmosphere of dullness.

I read this in one sitting, enthralled to return to the world of Vic & Blood.

I read the original "A Boy & His Dog" in the anthology "The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World" that I received as a birthday gift way back in July of 1969. It remains as powerful today as it did then. The added joy of the expanded tales is more than I could have hoped for. Blood is, in all senses, the hero of these stories. Without him, neither Vic nor Spike would be much more than thugs. More likely dead than not. How unfortunate that we may never find out what is "Over the Hill".

by Harlan Ellison

M 50x66
Lou Jacobs's review
Apr 24, 2018 · edit

it was amazing
Read 2 times. Last read April 16, 2018 to April 24, 2018.

Finally!!! The best award winning post apocalyptic story is told in it's full glorious context. The story of Blood, the telepathic dog and "his" boy Vic and eventually his girl Spike and their struggles to survive in a post World War Four wasteland.
This marvelous adventure first came to my attention in 1969 while reading a UK digest magazine: New Worlds ... and then reread later in a 1969 US hardcover collection of Ellison stories. I was hooked and hoped for more from these intriguing characters. I had to wait until 1977 when Ellison wrote the prequel story, "Eggsucker" ... an origin type of story that I gobbled up in the SF/Fantasy magazine: Ariel, Vol #2. The continuation of the story of Vic & Blood then popped up in an obscure media magazine: Mediascene Prevue in 1980 as "Run,Spot, Run" .... then we were left dangling for almost 40 years for the conclusion. Thanks to editor: Jason Davis and Ellison we are now treated to publication of Ellison's unpublished and unproduced NBC TV teleplay of: "Blood's A Rover". The final script was finished in August 1977 but never saw the light of day. The final novel is now assembled in prose format for the first time.
For a complete experience search out the cult movie "Boy And His Dog" from 1975 ... this visualizing the portion of this story where Vic stumbles upon the "banal" underground community, only to be seduced by the leader's daughter: Quilla June Holmes to abandoning Blood - with the object of him supplying "stud service" to the community.
For further visualization don't miss Richard Corben's adaptation of part of the story in his two issue comic adaptation: "Vic & Blood" by Mad Dog Comics in 1988.

It's worth the price of admission to experience the telepathic interplay between Blood and Vic, and later Spike. Blood is truly the more advanced and mature being, and not Vic or the marauding gang of "rovers" that have survived the nuclear holocaust. It's rather comical how Blood has to correct the grammar of Vic ... he is truly his teacher, historian and finder of chicks. Together they form an ideal partnership - until unforeseen events unfold.

Blood is an ancestor of the "skirmisher dogs" of the Third War . Scientists retrieved Dolphin spinal fluid and experimentally injected it into dogs. The first near success occurred in a dog named, Ahbhu (which also happens to be the name of Ellison's beloved dog) ... followed by further crossbreeding and experimentation leading to the development of the Skirmisher dog ..... when linked telepathically with his human controller was able to detect poison gas and radiation.
The ultimate dream and goal is to rebuild civilization ... to be able to grow their own food from the soil ... and to live like rational civilized beings.
Thanks to Netgalley and Subterranean Press for providing me with an advanced proof of this gem in exchange for an honest review. # @SubPress

Confession time: I've never read a Harlan Ellison book before.


I've read the handful of comics that he's written, and I'm well aware of his status as a living legend, a titan or the written word.....but I'm also aware of the tons of stories floating around about what a jerk he can be, and that has most certainly colored my perception of the man. I've dipped in and out of his work through the years, and nothing has ever particularly grabbed me. That, coupled with my personal impression of the man, has caused me to set aside, unfinished, everything of his that I've ever started.


I have vivid memories of stumbling across a bizarre film on channel 9 in New York City called A BOY AND HIS DOG. I was probably 10 or so, and, while I didn't get to watch the whole thing, what I saw stuck with me for over three decades. As I grew older, I became aware of the genesis of that film, but I never sought out the stories that introduced the teen-aged scavenger Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood. Their status as parts of a whole that would, in all likelihood, never be completed, kept my interest from sparking.


Enter Subterranean Press, and the as-complete-as-we're-likely-to-get hardcover BLOOD'S A ROVER. Editor Jason Davis' introductory note, NEARLY FIFTY YEARS IN THE POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTES, gives readers a brief history of the Vic & Blood stories, and explains the genesis of each tale. A novella, a short story or two, a script for an aborted television adaptation, bits and pieces from a comic-book adaptation, a brief conversation between our main characters, the wit and wisdom of the titular telepathic canine....all this and more has been masterfully complied into a beautiful package by Ellison, Davis, and Subterranean Press, and I'm happy to say that not only did I finish this book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.


Having never really encountered Vic and Blood before, I was a little surprised to see just how ruthless and savage Vic, a teen-aged scavenger in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, can be. He thinks nothing of murdering and raping as he, led by the much smarter Blood, roams the land in search of weapons, food, and sex. Ellison populates their world with a colorful cast of background characters, but the relationship between this boy and his dog overshadows everything. The banter, the love/hate relationship...all pitch perfect.


If I had any complaints with this book, it would be the exclusion of the Richard Corben graphic adaptation (Which I wasn't really expecting to see here, but it would have been nice.), and the fact that, after all we go through with Vic and Blood, their story is still incomplete, and will likely stay that way. I could easily have read another five hundred pages, and I closed the book thinking "And what happened next???" Don't get me wrong: This is a complete book. There is no cliffhanger....but, as any true storyteller will, Ellison left me wanting more. Excellent stuff, highly recommended.


BLOOD'S A ROVER earns eight out of ten telepathic dogs:

🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶


Subterranean Press provided a review copy.

A Boy And His Dog was one of the great classic shorts of late sixties science fiction and it’s shock value put Harlan Ellison on the map. Long before all the modern fantasies about a post-apocalyptic world, such a theme was extraordinarily popular in fifties and sixties science fiction with the idea being that there would be an atomic war and few survivors fending for themselves. A Boy and His Dog postulated a savage survival universe where the earth’s surface was populated by teenage rover gangs and their telepathic dogs. The dogs were necessary to sniff out radiation monsters and to find females who were quite scarce. There were also solos who traveled without gang protection, dependent on their dog partners. Vic and Blood were one such partnership with Blood having the brains and Vic being little more than a dumb teenager barely smart enough to survive without the smarts and instincts of his canine partner. The relationship between these two is at the heart of the story, particularly when a young woman comes between the two:

“She didn’t know what it was to trust somebody like Blood so much that he was a part of you. She didn’t know what friends meant, because down there in that phony Topeka nobody was really friends. It was all bullshit down there; fat, happy liars, turning their fat, happy faces away from the real trouble.”

The story is also a product of the Sixties, juxtaposing the freedom of the surface (albeit a world of savagery, casual rape, and starvation) with life beneath the surface where middle class squares lived, surviving without sunlight in artificial crops and phoniness.

Apparently over the years, Ellison has also penned additional chapters to the story, and this volume collects all four Vic and Blood stories together in one volume in chronological order. Two additional short stories, one (Eggsucker) taking place as a prologue perhaps to A Boy and His Dog and one as an epilogue (Run Sot Run) are narrated through Blood’s voice, not Vic’s and give a rather unique perspective. The final selection is a screenplay (Blood’s A Rover) which features a strong female rover, smart, feisty, tough, wholly unlike the controversial role of women in the original story.

None of the newer stories have quite the impact of the original shocking story, although they are interesting for someone who is familiar with the original story.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.