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Since I am reformatting these now, I wanted to get them out in case anyone had some excellent input that needed to be incorporated. Most of these presented out of order are fairly straightforward, however.<br><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%" align="center"><br></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%" align="left">
</p><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%" align="left">“The Dog of the Drops” first appeared in 2002 in <i>3SF</i> and
is reprinted in <i>Starwater Strains</i>.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%">SUMMARY:
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> In
a decimated future, an unnamed narrator reveals that his duties took
him to the lands beyond the bombed cities where they have no
accommodations for travelers and no cook shops. He asks at a farm
and sees a “beautiful, very quiet young woman and five noisy boys
who called her 'Ma.'” As he is leaving, an elderly man stops him
and tells him a tale in a dialect which resembles Scottish.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> The
elderly man starts by asking him if he knows what a dog is. He once
saw a picture of a small one, with ears like small rugs or earmuffs.
It had no hands. His father told him those dogs could talk and do
small errands for their owners as well as aid in hunting raccoons and
watching the house when the master was away.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> However,
the “Life Man” did not like them, for they did not care for his
taxes, only for the masters who fed them, and ultimately decided to
kill all the dogs, claiming that they brought sickness and plague
(which no one had noticed before). Those that kept dogs were hung.
His father said that the dogs were “dead as cats”.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> He
tells the narrator of a man named Pet who went hunting out into
uncivilized areas called “the drops”, which were once called the
“barbs”, were people once lived around “fallinwalls”. There
are holes everywhere out there, most filled with water, dangerous for
a man to fall into if he is not paying attention. The speaker
mentions how bad the drops are, where old folk lived before the
“Bigkill”. On one of his hunts, Pet shot a wolf and followed its
blood trail. . Pet stayed the night there and heard a girl talking
to him. She said her mother was dead and there was no one left to
feed her. She refused to come by his fire, but he threw her food. He
promised to return the next day so that she would not die. Thinking
that he would find a woman to take care of her, he doesn't want
anymore than the five kids at home he already has, yet for a year he
went back and left food for her.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> Eventually,
a bull gored Pet in the meadow, and his young wife, who came looking
for him, saw a huge creature standing over Pet which would not let
her approach. She grabbed the speaker to come look with other
neighbors, and he made them put their weapons down when they saw the
giant black dog-like creature over Pet, protecting his body. He
talked to it, and told it he knew that she wouldn't harm Pet. The
giant dog creature left like a shadow. When they recovered Pet's
body, they knew that a bull gored him.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> Soon
thereafter, the young widow of Pet found fawn and raccoons left on
her step some days. She was also left with the five children Pet had
from a previous marriage. Soon a man named Sut started to like her,
but then made the mistake of hitting her. The next day he was killed
by a wolf. The elderly man, seeing that the narrator is interested
in Pet's widow, relays all of this and ends by warning the narrator
to take care and treat the young woman good, as well as Pet's kids,
or to simply go home.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> The
narrator looks back at the cottage of the widow, where he hopes to
return soon. He wonders where the Dog of the Drops lays, who watches
the cottage with him.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%">COMMENTARY:</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> The
challenging portion of this text is simply the dialect. Otherwise,
it is a straightforward tale of a future torn apart by war in which
dogs and other domestic pets were eradicated for fear of the diseases
they brought. The criticism implicit towards a government which
would eliminate pets which have come to have some psuedo-sentience
due to their freedom from taxation is perhaps a barb at the concern
of large government, but clearly some disaster has submerged humanity
into a civilization that resembles the peasant life of the middle
ages and pre-industrialization more than the life to which we are
accustomed. It is conceivable that these pets are related to the
speaking ones who serve mankind in “The Hero as Werwolf” and in
“Sonya, Crane Wessleman, and Kitty.”
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> The
irony is that Pet may have killed the mother of the wolf cub or puppy
whom he treats with such kindness afterwards. It seems unlikely that
lycanthropy or fantasy is involved – this is a straight science
fiction story in which the remnants of the dogs elevated to a kind of
sentience (who outlive cats, certainly) are forced to survive in the
wild after a destructive war just as the humans are. The bonds of
kindness that Pet forges create a protective instinct in the Dog of
the Drops towards his family.
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> It
is conceivable that “The Drops” represents a kind of barbaric
backwater, and that this is the meaning of the word “barb” which
the elderly speaker uses to describe it. The dialect might resemble a
Scottish one. The libertarian attitude of the speaker, criticizing
the “Life Man” for blaming dogs for their problems, is perhaps
presented without irony.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> The
idea introduced by the elderly speaker that dogs were already
speaking to their owners might be taken literally in a science
fictional environment as evidence that the genetic evolution of dogs
to something “more” than they currently are was already
occurring, especially given the government's disdain for them and
there freedom from taxation.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%">UNANSWERED
QUESTIONS:</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> There
has clearly been a war, possibly leaving large radiated areas. Is the
giant talking dog a product of this a mutation as a result of the
weapons of war, or is it a natural outgrowth of the dogs which had
already begun to change under the guidance and manipulation of men,
an advanced dog simply returning to a natural, harsh environment but
still capable of love, affection, loyalty, and communication?</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%">CONNECTION
WITH OTHER WORKS<br><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%"> There
is certainly a strain in Wolfe which presents the future as a
barbaric and less civilized past. “The Hero as Werwolf”, “King
Rat”, “Tracking Song” and <i>The Book of the New Sun</i> all
have features which mirror this post apocalyptic future. The animals
raised up to something higher with the ability to communicate with
their human masters may be found in all of those works as well. The
use of dialect and dogs will be repeated in “Rattler”.</p>
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