A Boy and His Dog

A Boy and His Dog is a cycle of narratives by author Harlan Ellison. The cycle tells the story of an amoral boy (Vic) and his telepathic dog (Blood), who work together as a team to survive in the post-apocalyptic world after a nuclear war. The original 1969 novella was adapted into the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog directed by L.Q. Jones. Both the story and the film were well-received by critics and science fiction fans, but the film was not successful commercially. The original novella was followed by short stories and a graphic novel. The film adaptation was an influence on Love and Monsters (2020) by Michael Matthews. The story and its film adaptation have also been mentioned to be influential in the creation of the Fallout video game series by Black Isle Studios. Publication history Ellison began the cycle with the 1969 short story of the same title, published in New Worlds, and expanded and revised the tale to novella length for his story collection The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World the same year. He subsequently bookended the original story with two others in the same world: "Eggsucker" (The Ariel Book of Fantasy Volume Two, 1977), and "Run, Spot, Run" (Amazing Stories, 1980). The stories were adapted as a two-issue black and white comic series illustrated by Richard Corben, Vic and Blood: The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog (Mad Dog Graphics, 1987). The series was collected as a color graphic novel of the same name in 1989 by NBM/St. Martin’s Press, and was in turn published in French by Comics USA (Vic & Blood: Les chroniques d'un gars et son chien, 1989) and in Spanish by Norma Editorial (Vic & Blood, CEC #72, 1990). Both the graphic novel and the prose stories were collected in Vic and Blood: The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog (Edgework Abbey/iBooks, 2003). Ellison's introduction to the collection explains that 1969's A Boy and His Dog is part of a larger novel that he has been writing for over 30 years and that story is finished, but the last, longest part is written as a screenplay with no current plans for production.