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A Boy and His Dog

178 statements
34 feature instances
10 referencing feature instances

A Boy and His Dog	type	TVTItem
A Boy and His Dog	label	A Boy and His Dog
A Boy and His Dog	page	ABoyAndHisDog
A Boy and His Dog	comment	Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })This 1969 Science Fiction Novella by Harlan Ellison is a look into the life of Vic and his telepathic dog Blood as they wander a post-apocalyptic United States after World War IV, scavenging for food and looking for sex. When Vic discovers Quilla, a beautiful young woman who appears to have come from one of the last refuges of civilization, he is instantly smitten with lust and assaults her at gunpoint. Before he can do the deed, they have to defend themselves from a band of rogues - they escape and a nascent romance develops.After much testing of mattress springs, she persuades him to come back to her home and to leave Blood behind. There, he is told that their underground society has stagnated, and their fertility rate has dropped, so they need healthy sperm donors. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Vic takes exception to their methods and escapes with Quilla's help.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })The original story was so successful, it won the 1970 Hugo Award, became a 1975 film starring Don Johnson, and was continued with short stories and a graphic novel; Vic and Blood: The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog. Just before the author's passing in 2018, he published the complete adventures of Vic and Blood in the Fix Up Novel Blood's a Rover.The Trope Codifier for the Post-Apocalyptic Dog. No relation to the 1946 short film of the same name.
A Boy and His Dog	fetched	2023-03-13T00:42:49Z
A Boy and His Dog	parsed	2023-03-13T00:42:49Z
A Boy and His Dog	isPartOf	DBTropes
A Boy and His Dog / int_109bc3e	type	Eat the Dog
A Boy and His Dog / int_109bc3e	comment	Eat the Dog: The Twist Ending inverts this magnificently. As Vic and Quilla escape with nothing but the clothes on their back, they find Blood has been waiting outside the entrance to the bunker for Vic for days without food. Quilla wants them to keep running and leave Blood. Blood needs something to eat. What does Vic do to resolve the crisis? He kills Quilla and feeds her to Blood.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_1d435a4d	type	A Boy and His X
A Boy and His Dog / int_1d435a4d	comment	A Boy and His X: Natch. This dog goes really above and beyond the norm, being sentient and telepathic, and helping his master find food and women.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
A Boy and His Dog / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: The world above ground is a wasteland populated by sex-hungry barbarians, Vic included; "Down Under" is a Dystopian, creepy, oligarchical pastiche of The Deep South where everyone is in whiteface.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_22071825	type	I'm a Humanitarian
A Boy and His Dog / int_22071825	comment	I'm a Humanitarian: The underground society has shades of this, with the unspoken implication that "the farm" is both their disposal of dissidents and a source of food.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_222dc873	type	Black Comedy
A Boy and His Dog / int_222dc873	comment	Black Comedy: "In the 1980s, politicians finally discovered the solution to urban blight." Cue nuclear explosion. "Well, I'd certainly say she had marvelous judgment, Albert, if not particularly good taste."
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A Boy and His Dog / int_2943de8d	type	Bros Before Hoes
A Boy and His Dog / int_2943de8d	comment	Bros Before Hoes: When Blood is dying from thirst and starvation, Quilla tries to convince Vic to abandon him. Instead Vic kills and cooks Quilla for Blood's lunch; it doesn't get any more bros before hoes than that.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_2a4deadc	type	Only You Can Repopulate My Race
A Boy and His Dog / int_2a4deadc	comment	Only You Can Repopulate My Race: The underground society requires healthy sperm from surface dwellers to impregnate their women. Vic thinks he's found his dream job. It subverts this by forcibly extracting it.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_3130e2c6	type	Uplifted Animal
A Boy and His Dog / int_3130e2c6	comment	Uplifted Animal: Blood is the descendant of a pair of dogs produced through two separate breeding experiments in the days prior to World War 3, one of which involved injecting the dogs with cerebral fluid taken from dolphins. The result was a breed of highly intelligent dogs with psychic abilities, Blood being the end result of that genetic line.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_31679dfb	type	Embarrassing Nickname
A Boy and His Dog / int_31679dfb	comment	Embarrassing Nick Name: Blood often refers to Vic as "Albert", which Vic hates.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_334e48a1	type	After the End
A Boy and His Dog / int_334e48a1	comment	After the End: The story is set in 2024, after two world wars. World War III was a conventional war, while IV was a massive nuclear exchange that lasted five days and more or less destroyed civilization, aside from isolated enclaves. Survivors, at least the ones we're shown, consist of the scavening roverpacks and solos on the surface, and the borderline cultish stepford smilers in the Down Under.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_42632336	type	Mecha-Mooks
A Boy and His Dog / int_42632336	comment	Mecha-Mooks: Implied. "Go and get another Michael from the warehouse."
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A Boy and His Dog / int_4e3decd5	type	A Friend in Need
A Boy and His Dog / int_4e3decd5	comment	A Friend in Need: Blood can't hunt for himself (although he fights fine and can scent track like radar), a side effect of his gaining the ability to speak somehow.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_6a4c6ec0	type	The Promised Land
A Boy and His Dog / int_6a4c6ec0	comment	The Promised Land: The main characters are searching for a place called Over The Hill.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_6b898eb8	type	Post-Apocalyptic Dog
A Boy and His Dog / int_6b898eb8	comment	Post-Apocalyptic Dog: Blood, who's one of the main characters, but it's shown in the early part of the story that dogs are common companions for the survivors, especially the wandering Solos like Vic.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_7335ffa9	type	Grey-and-Gray Morality
A Boy and His Dog / int_7335ffa9	comment	Grey-and-Gray Morality: Is a wasteland dweller, whose only thought at the start is getting to rape a woman before some other ones finish with her and shoot her, more or less sympathetic than an oppressive Eagleland society that offhandedly kills people for a bad attitude? You decide.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_74e9a5b1	type	Scavenger World
A Boy and His Dog / int_74e9a5b1	comment	Scavenger World: Everyone who lives on the surface survives either by hunting mutated wildlife or by scavenging pre-war canned goods and equipment from the ruins.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_79c34029	type	The Nose Knows
A Boy and His Dog / int_79c34029	comment	The Nose Knows: Like all dogs, Blood has an excellent sense of smell. Unlike our dogs, he can count foes, pinpoint their direction and distance to the nearest metre and point this out to his partner Vic.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_83a903f6	type	Stepford Smiler
A Boy and His Dog / int_83a903f6	comment	Stepford Smiler: An entire underground town of them, due to their use of clown makeup. Michael also has this effect, implied to be a malfunction of this particular Michael unit.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_8ba9512b	type	Our Zombies Are Different
A Boy and His Dog / int_8ba9512b	comment	Our Zombies Are Different: "Screamers", glow-in-the-dark, wailing zombies who only need to touch you to make you one of them.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_8c5f5c97	type	The Movie Buff
A Boy and His Dog / int_8c5f5c97	comment	The Movie Buff: The story starts with Vic and Blood going to the movies, which they do as often as they can due to the scarcity of film reels and working projectors.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_8e05350	type	Smart Animal, Average Human
A Boy and His Dog / int_8e05350	comment	Smart Animal, Average Human: In the film, as well as the original novella, Vic, a semi-literate teenage scavenger living After the End is aided by his super-intelligent dog, Blood, who is telepathic and well-read.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_8ed5c6e4	type	Asshole Victim
A Boy and His Dog / int_8ed5c6e4	comment	Asshole Victim: The ending would be much more tragic if Quilla June hadn't been, in the author's words, "meaner than a Drano milkshake". She throws her parents away without a second thought and mows down her neighbors in way that even disturbs Vic.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_90b66e22	type	Femme Fatale
A Boy and His Dog / int_90b66e22	comment	Femme Fatale: Quilla. Wants to be in charge and openly admits she was using Vic.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_a4c37cbe	type	Mood Whiplash
A Boy and His Dog / int_a4c37cbe	comment	Mood Whiplash: The movie has a pretty solid and consistent tone/premise...for the first hour. After Vic enters Topeka, it undergoes a Genre Shift, and turns into a bizarre combination of The Twilight Zone (1959) and 1984. There's also the Sudden Downer Ending in the original story, that the movie treats as a Black Comedy.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_a971e83c	type	Hidden Elf Village
A Boy and His Dog / int_a971e83c	comment	Hidden Elf Village: The Down Under sees itself as this, but it's actually a subversion; according to Vic's monologue in the theater, the Down Under is already well known amongst the surface survivors, and none of them show any particular interest in finding it, aside from being a fresh source of women.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_aa483bdc	type	DesertPunk
A Boy and His Dog / int_aa483bdc	comment	Desert Punk: Burned Out Earth style.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_ae3d6438	type	Deadpan Snarker
A Boy and His Dog / int_ae3d6438	comment	Deadpan Snarker: Blood loves to get his little digs in at Vic and his constant need for sex.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_b2463ea1	type	Intellectual Animal
A Boy and His Dog / int_b2463ea1	comment	Intellectual Animal: Blood is far smarter and more educated than Vic, teaching him history, keeping him out of trouble and planning tactics in a classic Brains and Brawn pairing.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_b53077b3	type	Take That!
A Boy and His Dog / int_b53077b3	comment	Take That!: The final version of Blood's a Rover positions Donald Trump's presidency as the last before the apocalypse.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_cb6b5864	type	New Wave Science Fiction
A Boy and His Dog / int_cb6b5864	comment	New Wave Science Fiction: Based on a New Wave story by one of the most prominent New Wave writers, the story was a typical rejection/subversion of classic "golden age" SF tropes.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_e5507f60	type	Truce Zone
A Boy and His Dog / int_e5507f60	comment	Truce Zone: Movie theaters are neutral ground, and any fighting is harshly dealt with, as movies are too precious and rare to risk losing. Vic is even angry when he recalls how another theater was burned down due to a big fight breaking out, and several film reels were lost, since there's no way to replace them.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_f16da697	type	Undying Loyalty
A Boy and His Dog / int_f16da697	comment	Undying Loyalty: To the degree that Vic chooses his dog over procreation with a cute girl.
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A Boy and His Dog / int_fff371b4	type	Death Seeker
A Boy and His Dog / int_fff371b4	comment	Death Seeker: Vic becomes one in further stories, implied to be out of guilt for killing Quilla.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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