SOURCE: “Mythic Patterns in Ellison's A Boy and His Dog,” in Extrapolation, Vol. 18, No. 2, May, 1977, pp. 162–66.

In the following essay, Crow and Erlich examine the mythic patterns and folk motifs present in Ellison's novella A Boy and His Dog.

Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, as novella and film, is a cautionary fable employing satire and mythic patterns to define a future world that in some respects may already be with us. The “boy” is Vic (Don Johnson) and the “dog” is Blood (voice by Tim McIntire); their world is the American Southwest in 2024, shortly after World War IV and the near-total destruction of the human race. Vic is a “solo” operating with his dog, Blood, competing for survival and sex with other solos and their dogs and, also, with “roverpaks,” small tribes formed in the wake of the destruction of all other social order. Blood, however...