Take One (Oct 1976)

TAKE ONE I have no wings and I must fly The dangerous visions of Harlan Ellison om we Ls a at ' 8g ioe. a io Sane aed by Steve Swires hs, Don Johnson and his faithful companion, Blood, scan the horizon for food in A Boy and his Dog. You’ve been acclaimed as the most honored science fiction writer in the world, having won six Hugos, two Nebulas, two Special Achievement Awards from the World Science Fiction Convention, one Edgar, and three Writers Guild of Amertca Awards, yet you've had tremendous difficulty over the years in having your work translated into mediums other than the printed page. Ellison: I’ve even had alittle trouble having it translated into the prinied page, particularly when it was on the printed page. Finally a film has been released, called A Boy and His Dog, which has your seal of approval. You consider it to be the most faithful of the translations of your work, yet the picture was written and directed by L.Q. Jones and produced by Alvy Moore, and that seems as incongruous a collaboration as Orson Welles working with Albert Steve Swires has a B.A. in Communication from American University, where he helped develop a course on science fiction film. For the past five years he has been film critic for two newspapers and two radio stations in Washington, D.C. Zugsmith on Touch of Evil. How did you become associated with Jones and Moore? There is a time for stories to be popular. Charles Fort talked about “steam engine time.” When it’s time for the steam engine to be invented it'll be invented, it doesn’t matter who invents it. I’ve found that the same thing happens with certain stories. 1’ll have a story published and it will get the attention of readers and may even win an award, but there won't be any attention from the studios or from independent producers, and then all of a sudden maybe two, three, four, five, ten years later, a certain story will get nine or ten offers for a film. Usually | turn them down, because | have this religious inhibition against dealing with brain damage cases. That’s what happened with A Boy and His Dog. The story came out, did very well, won a Nebula Award, and was included in an anthology, but it didn’t really get any attention at all from film people. For those who don’t know the story, it’s an apocalyptic vision after the Third World War in which the above-ground cities have been destroyed and all of the good middle-class folk with their Judaeo-Christian ethic have gone to live in cities sunk deep into the earth, called ‘“downunders.” The aboveground cities have been abandoned to roaming packs of young boys, wild kids, in other words — Truffaut-style wild kids — who either band together in what are called “roverpaks’” for protection, or if they are particularly hardy and individual are called “solos.” The interesting thing about the world is that during the Third World War they used animals for reconnaissance and_ infiltration. Dogs had been injected with the spinal fluid of baboons and dolphins and they are capable of speaking telepathically with their masters. This is the story of one “solo” whose name is Vic and a dog named Blood, and their adventures in the wonderful world of the future. It is a brutal and rather unpleasant story about a world in which survival is all that counts, totally amoral. The dogs have lost the ability to forage for food, but they have acquired, because of their telepathy, the ability to sniff out vari 7