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Writer's pictureChris Russell
Nov 29, 20224 min read

S3 E8 - A boy and his dog

Outro S3 E8


A boy and his dog.

Hello and welcome my survivor friends. For those of you traveling through the temporal rift that is podcast listening it is the end of November 2022.

We are just rolling out of Thanksgiving week here in the US.

I took some time off (from my real job) over the US Thanksgiving Holiday.

But we managed to get this episode written and edited across the week.

I’ve watched some content over the past few weeks that you may be interested in. I’ll post these links up on my new website at OldManApocalypse.com

The first was an old movie that someone was talking about on our Facebook page. It’s called Damnation Alley from 1977. Based on a Hugo award winner Roger Zelazny’s novella of the same name. I found it on YouTube. It’s about a nuclear apocalypse. It stars Jan-Michael Vincent and George Peppard. They are stationed in a remote missile silo and launch the missiles. There is a big nuclear war.

They hang out for a while then jump in a fancy assault vehicle called the ‘Landmaster’ to drive across what’s left of the US and, as they say, comedy ensues.

It has some interesting plot point but does not hold up well. The special effects are cringeworthy.

Apparently this movie was being filmed at the same time as the original Star Wars on the same lot and they kept taking budget away from Damnation Alley and giving it to Spielberg.

The next thing I watched was a series called Cyberpunk Edgerunners that I found on Netflix. It’s an 10 episode animated series about a cyberpunk future https://youtu.be/JtqIas3bYhg. It is based on the video game Cyberpunk Edgerunners 2077.

It’s fun. I liked it. It’s very violent. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. You can see the influence of early cyberpunk novels like Snow Crash.

I did make a pleasant discovery while watching it.

They have different music for each episode and as I was watching one, I could swear I recognized the voice of Tim Armstrong from Rancid, one of my favorite punk bands. So I did some googling and found that it was Tim Armstrong. But the band was Rat Boy and Tim was working with Rat Boy at his record label Hell Cat Records and contributed some vocals.

I discovered a new artist that I like – Rat Boy – which was cool.

Next I moved on to filling in my apocalypse cannon with a novella by Harlan Ellison called A boy and his dog. I struggled to find a print copy of this novella. It was never a stand-alone work and you can only really find it as part of compilation. However, after some digging I was able to find a scanned pdf of the story that I could download to my Kindle.

The novella is a very short work and takes maybe an hour to read. But it has some fascinating concepts in it. The first is that our protagonist is wandering the apocalypse with one thing on his mind – how to get laid. Which is somehow very humanizing. The second is that the dog in question is telepathic. I won’t spoil it for you, but it is definitely worth a read if you can find it and you can see why it was so influential in the genre.

Then I watched the 1975 movie adaption which is also on YouTube. It was much better than I expected. The ‘boy’ is played by a young Don Johnson – which is great. The sets and costumes and setting are very Mad Max.

If you like a Mad Max type universe it’s worth a watch.

They try to camp it up too much but stick to the novella almost word for word – until the last line, which they added some dialog to make sure we get the joke – which reportedly made Ellison mad.

There are prequel and sequel stories that I have not read, but they are out there. You can buy the set of three in one book.

I think this movie would benefit from a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez remake.

Watching the credits I learned that there was another musical link for me. One of the contributors to the sound track was none other than Ray Manzarek – the keyboard player for the Doors. This would have been a few years after Jim Morrison died.

And finally, there is a 3rd season of Lave Death and Robots out on Netflix. 9 new episodes. Really good. Way better than suffering through a Hallmark Christmas movie.

So there you have it – a handful of apocalyptic content for you to indulge in. I appreciate the music connection. Music is intertwined with the unreal nature of reality. I get a kick out of seeing those harmonics in life.

As always my friends I would appreciate your support either on Patreon or on the new Acast subscription option.

We’ve got well over 250 people in our Facebook group now – come over and join us. Lot’s of crazy people there. Remember when you ask to join the group to answer the challenge questions – this let’s me know you’re not a robot, or at least not a spam bot.

Links are in the show notes. I will attempt to post this article with all its attending links up on the new website.

Stay warm, stay safe and keep surviving.

Patreon to support the show -> https://www.patreon.com/AftertheApocalypse


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