mans best friend

[The Yosemite Bear]

ok, I just finished re-reading snow crash again. & I was thinking on the subject of dogs and Sci-Fi.

we had telepathic dogs in "Vic & Blood" as well as "Starship Troopers", lets not get started on Dean Koontz, what else in Sci-Fi has Canis not so familus?

[Deathstalker]

"I'm Barf, I'm a Mog, half-man and half-dog. I'm my own best friend."

[LadyTevar]

the original robotic dog, K-9

[Coyote]

Goddamn Daggits.

[Peptuck]

Good old fashioned 40k cyber mastiffs.

[Questor]

There was a dog in a Bolo story, I think. The dog's brain helped the bolo's computer.

[Covenant]

Ein the Data Dog from Cowboy Bebop would fit, though I don't know enough about it to tell you what the little Corgi's modifications were.

[Darth Fanboy]

Eins is the best dog in fiction EVER, hands down.

Archer had that dog on ENT, and I believe that the feces it left on set made for more compelling characters than the actors hired.

[Ford Prefect]

Ein the Data Dog from Cowboy Bebop would fit, though I don't know enough about it to tell you what the little Corgi's modifications were.

We never actually find out, exactly, what being a 'data dog' was, as Punch reveals that it is top secret. However, they seemed to have been trying to create a canine super hacker - when Ed was repulsed by a cyber cult in the latter half of the series, Ein breaks through the same security with basically effortless ease.

[Nyrath]

I'm blanking on the title, something like "Valinda Is Hurt." A short story in Analog magazine. A genetically altered dog is part of a Marine strike force. His trainer/soldier is hurt during a combat mission, and is left behind. The dog wants the commanding officer to mount a rescue mission, but the officer doesn't want to.

The dog says: "Semper Fi. Sir."

They mount the mission and rescue the soldier.

[Ryushikaze]

Brain, from Inspector Gadget. In addition to all the crap her did in the original series, he got his own riverfront home to retire to in the sequel.

[LadyTevar]

"A Boy and his Dog"

[andrewgpaul]

I think that's what Yosemite was referring to when he said "Vic & Blood".

[The Yosemite Bear]

yeah, "A Boy and his Dog" is the movie name, the Short Story is called "Vic and Blood" (A story of a boy and his dog)

oh and Transonic pit bull terrier that sleeps in cyberspace who calls himself "Fido" is cool too.

[Styphon]

There's always the thread's title.

[18-Till-I-Die]

In the Splicers tabletop RPG, there was a class called Packmasters who were humans empathically bonded to a pack of super-dogs, used as special forces of a sort.

Splicers, from the creators of Rifts, was full of other such awesome madness including a nano-virus that caused any metal object (even like, a paperclip) top transform into giant mecha and go Skynet on any nearby humans.

[Manus Celer Dei]

The incredibly depressing We3.

[Sriad]

There was a quite affecting novella in "Year's Best SF 10" or "11" I think, but the author escapes my memory... I'll have a chance to check tomorrow.

[Sriad]

Victory!

The novella in question, "Sergeant Chip" by Bradley Denton, won the 2005 Sturgeon Award for best short story and can be freely read on the author's website.

It's told from the point of view of an Enhanced Canine mentally bonded to a soldier, in a near-future setting. The story alludes very briefly to the dog's end situation (first person, past tense after all) and then follows his development as a cutting edge weapon/special force soldier, with all the glories and battles that would be expected of a piece of military sci-fi. The style itself is simple and straightforward in an endearingly dog-like manner. It's very well worth the read.

I mean shit, I remembered reading it three years later here, and I can barely remember what I did last week.

Connie Willis' "The Last of the Winnebagos" is another near-future story, which concerns the aftermath of a plague that caused the extinction of domesticated dogs. The core theme is how people react to disasters after it's too late to do anything useful, but dogs are how she gets there.

I'm pretty sure there's something about dogs in Brin's Uplift series, either in the main novels or a cannon short story.

[JointStrikeFighter]

yeah, "A Boy and his Dog" is the movie name, the Short Story is called "Vic and Blood" (A story of a boy and his dog)

Is that the one set in a post nuclear war wasteland?

[Ethereal41]

"Hello, I'm rags! Woof, woof!"

[CaptainChewbacca]

Let's not forget Dog Boys from RIFTS RPG. Genetically engineered warrior/soldier/companion/servants, humanoid dogs that can't help but serve humanity.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In The Dimensioneers by Doris Piserchia, travel between dimensions is accomplished by a sort of symbiotic, telepathic bond between a person with the talent, and a "mount" of some sort. The "Dogcatcher" is a character who tried to use his talent, and instead of travelling he only halfway left our dimension and came back merged with the dog. The dog wasn't capable of supporting his talent.

In Doris Piserchia's A Billion Days of Earth, one of the characters is a "Leng", a humanoid, distant descendant of dogs.

Clifford D Simak's City is a series of stories told by sentient Dogs in the far future. One of which involves a dog and his master transformed into creatures that can survive on Jupiter.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Thor, made into a movie that keeps showing up on TNT and the Sci - Fi channel called "Full Moon" was a good horror detective story, since the novel is told primarily from the senses and point of view of the Family's German Shepard.

Shep may like it, though it doesn't have nukes it does have a dog takeing on a werewolf, and other nice bits.

[Batman]

It's left to me to mention Fallout's Dogmeat, Robodog and K-9? That's pretty sad.