# dogs (and cats) in SFF



## Carolyn Hill (Apr 14, 2006)

Maybe this is a dumb question, but where are all the dogs in SFF?  I've got the uncomfortable feeling that cats outnumber dogs.

I've been trying to think of dogs (not wolves or doglike aliens) that play significant roles in SFF--a character role, or at least reappearance of the same dog throughout the text, doing something meaningful rather than just establishing background atmosphere.  I'm not coming up with many examples, and half of those are a stretch.

Dogs:


Toto in Oz

The dog in Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog"

K-9 in _Doctor Who_ (OK, so K-9 is a robot dog)

Montmorency in Connie Willis's _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ (but see my comment below, about the cat)

Are there more cats in significant roles?

Cats:


Austin and other cats in Tanya Huff's _The Keeper's Chronicles_ series

The cat in Heinlein's _Door into Summer_

Cat in _Red Dwarf_ (OK, no longer really a cat)

Princess Arjumane in Connie Willis's _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ (more of a character than the dog Montmorency that I mentioned above)

Various cats in Andre Norton's novels

What do you all think?  Can you recall other dogs, other cats?


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## ScottSF (Apr 14, 2006)

There's a Dog named "Dog" in George R.R. Martin's "Feast for Crows."

Maybe there's no dogs in Sci-fi because we ate them all when things got bad on earth 

Oooh there was a robot dog in the original Battle Star Galactica named Muffet.  I think the man's best friend roll was handed to robots in the future.


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## alex22 (Apr 14, 2006)

I think there was dog in Assassins Apprentice and related books by Robin Hobb. Nighteyes he was called. He was technically a wolf, but then K-9 was technically a robot....


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## Tea is my copilot (Apr 14, 2006)

Frederik Pohl "The coming of the quantum cats"

I read this book six years ago, and don't remember what it was about (not something that would sweep me off my feet, clearly, but the title indicates there were cats involved) 

And one with dogs:

Dean Koonz "Watchers"
It's that golden retriever Einstein. 

There's more cats because (as Chris once said) we're mostly cat people. We like independent animals.

EDIT:Maybe you should just ignore that cats book, sice I really have no idea what it was about. I know there was a guy, and something like police, but no cat rings a bell. So if you've read the book, please give me a hand here.


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## chrispenycate (Apr 14, 2006)

Cordwainer Smith's "instrumentality of mankind" series and C'Mel, his cat Melanie, and D'Joan
Staying with the apostrophes, S'Kitty, from Mecedese Lackey
Many Hounds- I'll cite the ones in Ericsons "gardens of the moon" as talking, individual personalities, but as a symbol in great hunts all over.
Schrodingers cat, who would turn up, but is still trapped in that blasted box.
Pixel, the cat who walks through walls.
Cats are frequently goddesses- it suits their character- I'll just put Eddings.


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## nixie (Apr 14, 2006)

Garth Nix's Lirael has a dog in it.
There's also Fluke by James Herbert but thats technically a horror story,so doesn't really count.


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## Teir (Apr 14, 2006)

alex22 said:
			
		

> I think there was dog in Assassins Apprentice and related books by Robin Hobb. Nighteyes he was called. He was technically a wolf, but then K-9 was technically a robot....


 
Nighteyes was a wolf 

The dogs in this series were Nosey and Smithy if that helps Brown Rat


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## jackokent (Apr 14, 2006)

There's "no good dog" in J V Jone's Barbed Coil


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## GrownUp (Apr 14, 2006)

Gaspode the magic talking dog appears in a few Discworld books, and there are a few dog characters in the packs in the Shades.

There are about a million cats in Tad Williams' 'Tailchasers Song', which I like even though I don't like cats. Literary cats are better than real cats.


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## Winters_Sorrow (Apr 14, 2006)

There's a Dog in Red Dwarf as well - the parallel universe episode with a female Lister, Holly & Rimmer in it. 

And as far as fantasy goes, there are any number of werewolf stories which are arguably 'doglike' in a savage way.

Dr Moreau has all sorts of beasties in it too


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## Carolyn Hill (Apr 14, 2006)

Yes, yes, these are good examples!  You people have excellent brains.

I've thought of another dog and cat, both in Jody Lynn Nye's _Taylor's Ark_.


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## sanityassassin (Apr 14, 2006)

david Gemmel also had a dog in a few of his stories including an old mongral in one of the druss books


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## kyektulu (Apr 14, 2006)

*Dont forget the cats Grebo in Terry Pratchetts 'Witches' and Shia and Khanu in Maggie Furys 'Aurian' saga.

Yes cats do outnumber dogs in my experience of Fantasy, I dont know why, personally I prefare dogs myself.

I am including a wolf in the book im currently writing.*


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## Denie Alconn (Apr 14, 2006)

Ever played Starfox Adventures?
The General is deffinately a dog!!


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## alex22 (Apr 15, 2006)

Teir said:
			
		

> Nighteyes was a wolf


 
I thought i mentioned that?....must have been mistaken.


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## littlemissattitude (Apr 15, 2006)

I can't think of any dogs or cats in science fiction or fantasy off the top of my head.  Well, there's Data's cat on ST:TNG, but that's tv, not literature.

Honestly, the only animal that I can think of in sf/fantasy literature right now that really impressed me was the condor in Kage Baker's _Mendoza in Hollywood_.  Named Erich von Stroheim, if I recall correctly.  Wonderful character; quite vocal, and impossible to consider as "just background".


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## Teir (Apr 15, 2006)

alex22 said:
			
		

> I thought i mentioned that?....must have been mistaken.


 
No, you were not mistaken. You did say that and yes, I did notice it the first time. I simply said it again for Brown Rats benefit as you started off your sentence with ' i think there was a dog....'.


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## Pyan (Apr 15, 2006)

There's the hani in C.J.Cherryh's Chanur series; maybe not actually cats, but with a lot of their characteristics, and the cover art definitely shows them as feline.


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## Quokka (Apr 15, 2006)

Kootn_z's_ _Fear Nothing _and_ Seize the Night, _also has a dog Orson, who is a significant character.


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## GrownUp (Apr 16, 2006)

Brown Rat said:
			
		

> Yes, yes, these are good examples! You people have excellent brains.


 
I'll take that compliment for myself and say thank you.


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## A1ien (Apr 18, 2006)

Harry Potter. Sirius becomes a big black dog. I know that's a weak example but...

There was a cat in Phillip Pullman's "Subtle Knife" which showed the main character the way between worlds and it showed up a few more times after that. And of course one of the main characters daemons settled as a cat.

One of the main characters in Diane Duanes novels about young wizards (I forget the name, High wizardry or something) he had a dog

Can't think of any other examples


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## jackokent (Apr 18, 2006)

Isn't there a dog thing in Roger Zelazny's This Immortal?


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## chrispenycate (Apr 18, 2006)

pyanfaruk said:
			
		

> There's the hani in C.J.Cherryh's Chanur series; maybe not actually cats, but with a lot of their characteristics, and the cover art definitely shows them as feline.



The Hani, while definitely feline, are based on leonine characteristics (hence the "pride" of Chanur) with the males as supernumary drones unless fighting is required.

Two dogs:- "Sirius" from Olaf Stapleton's book of the same name and "Ralph von Wau Wau" from Spider Robinson's Callahan stories.


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## Paige Turner (Apr 18, 2006)

Blood from_ A Boy and His Dog_

A post-apocalyptic tale based on a novella by Harlan Ellison. A boy communicates telepathically with his dog as they scavenge for food and sex, and they stumble into an underground society where the old society is preserved. The daughter of one of the leaders of the community seduces and lures him below, where the citizens have become unable to reproduce because of being underground so long. They use him for impregnation purposes, and then plan to be rid of him.


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## jackokent (Apr 18, 2006)

Sirius from Dianna Wyyne Jone's Dogsbody.


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## chrispenycate (Apr 18, 2006)

From my youth: "the cat who walked by himself (and all places were alike to him)" from Kipling's "Just so stories", and the Cheshire cat from Lewis Caroll's "Alice in wonderland" 
In Alfred Bester's "The Deceivers" he introduces a psy cat (might be a psi cat) that chases the spots in front of your eyes. There's a robot cat in Stross' "accelerando, a central character, As is Cat in Joan d. Vinges "Psion" series though he isn't a cat, but the mental processes are faily clear)

Heinlein's books are swarming with cats and kittens: I'll just add randy, short for "random numbers" because that's what determined his behaviour patterns.
And Piers Xanthony's Jenny elf has a cat called Sammy, who can find anything but home.


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## Wolfeborn (Apr 19, 2006)

Theres a cat in both alien and aliens though they are films, but also book versions of them both.  is called jonesey and causes much problems in original aliens, other than that I cant really think of any cats/dogs though there must be a fair few.


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## chrispenycate (Apr 19, 2006)

A small dog, a corgi called "Druid" in "A feral Darkness" by Doranna Durgan

A cat, called Sekhemet, in "Lord of the two lands" by Judith Tarr (am I allowed her hound in the "Hound and the falcon" trilogy? No, because he's an elf really)

Emerald in Eddings "redemption of Althalmus" though she's a goddess- many cats are.
And, if I'm allowed big cats, and extraterrestrial cats,

Nimitz, treecat in the Honor harrington series (David Weber), the Kzinsi from Niven, and a series from Tara K. Harper with cougars (not felix domestipuss, but cats nevertheless) I'm trying to remember the author of a book where the principal protagonist was a Skottish wildcat, masquerading as a vulgar tabby.

And in "Brothers in arms", Bujold brings us a once upon a cat, a furry catskin blanket that purrs (having discovered the cat waterbottle in my youth, this sounds extremely attractive)

As I was brought up by siamese cats, my youth contains a book called "Tai-Lu talking" by one Anne Grahame Johnson (no, I couldn't have remembered that - I 'searched it, but remembered the book) which is a fantasy in that siamese cats, while talkative, don't say anything that complicated.


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## A1ien (Apr 19, 2006)

It seems we are finding more cats than dogs after all!


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## An8el (Apr 20, 2006)

See Ratty, turned out to be a cool question...!


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## chrispenycate (Apr 20, 2006)

A1ien said:
			
		

> It seems we are finding more cats than dogs after all!


The Statistic may be biased; from the first I owned up to being a cat person.

In the David Drake/S.M.Stirling "The General" (Raj Whitehouse) series, large dogs are the riding animals for both soldiers and civilians, though none struck me particulary as a character.

Clifford D. Simac's "City" is told from the point of view of dogs, after the extinction of mankind. However, it's a _very_ long time since I read it.

Does Aslan qualify as a cat? The white witch proclaims him so, but his character istooself sacrificing for me to consider him a true feline.

Websearching (yes, I know it's cheating, but this is _research_ now) brought up four volumes of a collection called "CatFantastic", Edited by André Norton and Martin H. Greenburg, and one "Cats in space…and other places" from Brian Fawcett. (plus a website catsinspace.com dedicatted to feline Sci-Fi) with no doggy equivalents.

And there I appear to grind to a halt - my old memories not what it was (It used to be my sex drive, if I remember correctly). This claims to be related to star trek  

Ode to Spot** 

Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature** 
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?** 
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses** 
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.** 

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,** 
a singular development of cat communications** 
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection** 
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.** 

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;** 
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.** 
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,** 
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.** 

O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display** 
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.** 
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,** 
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.**


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## Carolyn Hill (Apr 20, 2006)

chrispenycate said:
			
		

> This claims to be related to star trek
> 
> Ode to Spot**
> 
> ...



Hey, yeh, that's Data's poem to his cat!

Chrispenycate, you are an amazing font of info!


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## tiny99 (Apr 20, 2006)

Dont know if  I am allowed this one, cos it's from 2000 AD and I don't think I've heard mention of that publication in the short time I've been wandering around this site.......but his name was "Strontium Dog" and he used to travel around space and have all sorts of crazy inter-galactic adventures.....good example???


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## GrownUp (Apr 20, 2006)

All of the mutants were also known as 'Strontium Dogs'. The character you may be thinking of who looked a little dog-like is called 'Feral'. That's from a long time ago though, back in the days of Johnny Alpha.


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## tiny99 (Apr 20, 2006)

Thanks for that Grown Up, I like Mutant dogs, I think there should be more of them. As for cats in Sci-fi, all of the Thundercats were cats, all of them, not a dog among 'em, all cats.


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## jackokent (Apr 20, 2006)

I actually read a book called Star Dog, many years ago about an alien dog that mated with an earth one.  It was truly awful.


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## GrownUp (Apr 20, 2006)

tiny99 said:
			
		

> Thanks for that Grown Up, I like Mutant dogs, I think there should be more of them. As for cats in Sci-fi, all of the Thundercats were cats, all of them, not a dog among 'em, all cats.


 
It's odd that Mumm-Ra (the everliving) wasn't fond of the Thundercats, being a mummy. He ought to have had a spiritual thing going on with them, but instead he was their mortal (immortal) enemy. 

Even cartoon characters have the power to surprise me.


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## tiny99 (Apr 20, 2006)

Must have been some sort of dogs or cats in the Star Wars universe, after all, what did the Empire base the preliminary designs of the AT-AT's on?


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## Carolyn Hill (Apr 20, 2006)

tiny99 said:
			
		

> Must have been some sort of dogs or cats in the Star Wars universe, after all, what did the Empire base the preliminary designs of the AT-AT's on?



Or just birds:  based on the cranes at the Port of Oakland.


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## An8el (Apr 22, 2006)

I seem to remember a talking doberman in a story by Robert Zelazy - owned by a blind woman who was being treated by a psychologist who would go into her mind and sort of terra-form and direct her dreams as part of the treatment.  Dream Master I think it was called. The style was like Philip K. Dick's.


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## Pyan (Apr 22, 2006)

If you allow Data's cat, here's Capt'n Archers's Beagle, Porthos.


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## tiny99 (Apr 22, 2006)

GrownUp said:
			
		

> All of the mutants were also known as 'Strontium Dogs'. The character you may be thinking of who looked a little dog-like is called 'Feral'. That's from a long time ago though, back in the days of Johnny Alpha.


 
Do you also remember  "The Ballad Of Halo Jones"? Because there was a particularly nasty robot dog in that story, he started off being on Halo's side and he would protect her, but then he flipped out and tried to kill her.


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## Pyan (Apr 22, 2006)

chrispenycate said:
			
		

> In the David Drake/S.M.Stirling "The General" (Raj Whitehouse) series, large dogs are the riding animals for both soldiers and civilians,


 
And in _The War of Powers_, by Robert Vardeman, dogs are both general transport and used as cavalry. I seem to remember the hero of this driving a wheeled dog-sleigh, as well.


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## Carolyn Hill (Apr 22, 2006)

tiny99 said:
			
		

> Do you also remember  "The Ballad Of Halo Jones"? Because there was a particularly nasty robot dog in that story, he started off being on Halo's side and he would protect her, but then he flipped out and tried to kill her.



Yes, I remember Toby and his claim that "I did it all for LOVE!"

I guess if we're including comics, there are Krypto the Superdog and Streaky the Supercat.


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## tiny99 (Apr 22, 2006)

That's him! That's the fella! I couldn't remember his name, it was a long time ago (although it was set a few centuries from now) and yes , he did it all for love, he was in love with Halo Jones...nice work you enigmatic rodent, you have awoken some happy memories for me.... I salute you.


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## Taltos (Apr 24, 2006)

Some dogs:
Roger Zelazny "A Night in the Lonesome October" (actually both dog and a cat)
Clifford D. Simak "All Flesh is Grass" 
Clifford D. Simak "They Walked Like Men"
Isaac Asimov "Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter"
Mihhail Bulgakov "Sobatshje Serdtse"

Cats: 
Fritz Leiber "The Green Millenium"
Robert Heinlein "The Door into Summer"

Not to mention the Moreau Island based novels, which contain modified cats/dogs.


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## kdwentworth (Apr 24, 2006)

Dean R. Koontz has a wonderful dog in _Dragon Tears_ and even writes some scenes from it's viewpoint.  I have dogs in my alternate history Cherokee fantasy, _This Fair Land_.


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## tiny99 (Apr 24, 2006)

Mad Max had a dog too.


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## petkusj (Apr 27, 2006)

I'm coming late to this, but I remember a short story, "Into Your Tent I'll Creep."


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## edott (Apr 27, 2006)

just read a short story in analog where aliens show up and start killing all the dogs.


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## Ravensquawk (Apr 30, 2006)

You asked and people answer; here's mine. I hear Hitler and Mussolini hated cats, and Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Poe, Lovecraft loved them. Any dregs of society who can't get anyone else to love him can get a dog to love him; really neat people love cats. So figure!


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## kyektulu (Apr 30, 2006)

edott said:
			
		

> just read a short story in analog where aliens show up and start killing all the dogs.


#

*That dosent sound like an entertaining read.*


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## CarlottaVonUberwald (May 1, 2006)

um, Rk(roadkill, salvage ships cat?) the cat form Anne mcgaffrey (sp?) 

and in the rowan series didnt she have a braque cat called rascal...or am i thinking of something different?

and in pratcheets works Death ends uo with lots of cats at one point for some reason.


The dogs guild feature heavily in one Pratchett novel

i tend to remember cats because i have more of an interest in them though.


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## Carolyn Hill (May 4, 2006)

While wandering around looking for something else, I found the following description of catcentric SFF by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in _The Cat's Job_.

"Who really knows what the cat's job is? Is it to govern? To sleep? Or something more? 

"[...]Steve Miller's fictional 'The Cat's Job' explores the notion that cats -- at least some cats -- work much harder than we'll ever know. Sharon Lee's short story 'The Big Ice' reveals the danger and the magic of a Maine Winter...and the joint Lee & Miller farce 'King of The Cats' shows just what could happen if the a most powerful wizard in the world came face to face with an out-of-this world King of the Cats."

Has anyone read these?


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## alicebandassassin (May 4, 2006)

cats being a more indepent type of animal have got to bee easyer to put in a book were they may have to fend for themseves for a time. you could hardly ask for the torcher to stop so you can go feed the dog!.Not that i dont love both


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## edott (May 5, 2006)

kyektulu said:
			
		

> #
> 
> *That dosent sound like an entertaining read.*


 
It takes humanity a while to even figure out what the aliens are doing then it is claimed they are doing it cause Dogs will soon evolve and take over the galaxy.

I remember reading a long time ago a short story where Man encounters aliens and are trying to negotiate a peace treaty someone kill one of the alien ambassador and the Human captain's cat, they figure out it was one of the aliens as the aliens did not realize the cat was a pet and killed the cat as it saw the murder of the alien ambassador. i must have been in jr high when i read that.


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## alicebandassassin (May 5, 2006)

it always takes humanity awhile to work anything out for intelligent life we arnt half supid somtimes


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## BookStop (May 9, 2006)

Nobody's mentioned Dean Koontz' _Watchers_ yet.  Now that's a dog!


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## beenorthern (May 16, 2006)

Actually, Bookstop, someone did mention *Watchers* earlier.  But I agree with you -- a great dog and an engaging read.  It's one of the very few Koontz books I've kept.

There are some neat augmented dogs in David Weber's *Heirs of Empire* (#3 in this series; space opera that's a much faster read than his Harrington series).  Noble and heroic dogs ...  BTW, the aliens in this series just love dogs, and started augmenting them so they could take their pet dogs home to a higher gravity world.

In Crawford Kilian's *Brother Jonathan*, scientists and AI form a network that links humans, chimps and dogs in a gestalt mind.

Diane Duane has already been listed ...  Ponch, Kit's dog in the Young Wizards series (or is Kit Ponch's human?) gets an increasing large role from *A Wizard Alone*, through *Wizard's Holiday* and walks off with the major part in *Wizards at War*.  But *The Book of Night with Moon* and *To Visit the Queen* (var. title *On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service*) are all about cats -- feline wizards, and they're among my favourite books.

There is just something so neat about a book told from a nonhuman viewpoint.  Probably why I like Zelazny's *A Night in the Lonesome October* so much ...

And while true communication with dogs or cats seems very attractive, Saki's short story "Tobermory", about a talking cat, leads one to think that it might not be such a good idea ...


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## Mouse (Jun 3, 2006)

How about Crope's dog Towndog in JV Jone's A Fortress of Grey Ice?!

Can't think of many else actually. Apart from Nosy and Smithy who have already been mentioned. There needs to be more dogs!


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## Tau Zero (Jun 3, 2006)

I think that cats, by their nature of being a little more inscrutable than dogs, lends themselves well for sci-fi.  

I remember long ago a short book (an Ace Double, i think) about a spaceship under the control of a dog's brain.  The story was entirely told from the dog's viewpoint.  There's also Andre Norton's "Moon of Three Rings" about someone turning into a dog.


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