A COLLECTION GOAL ACHIEVED

After first hearing about its imminent publication some 43 years ago, I eagerly awaited the release of Harlan Ellison's BLOOD'S A ROVER, which would collect all of the existing post-apocalyptic stories of A Boy and His Dog, plus a screenplay that takes up where the last of the previous three tales left off. Well, it took until 2018 for the book to finally come out, perhaps due to Harlan holding out in hope of selling the script for a TV series or a movie, and when it finally came out it was issued as an expensive limited edition that I could not afford. Nonetheless, I diligently checked eBay for six years in hope of lucking into an affordable copy, and just last week my patience finally paid off. I snagged a library copy for considerably less than the book usually lists for — for a long while the average price for a copy was between $100-$150, and sometimes a lot higher — and it just arrived in today's mail.

Though I have read the first three stories many, many times over the past four decades, even getting my copy of the the book containing the original novella signed by Harlan himself, I will approach this complete edition as though I had never read any of the Vic and Blood yarns, so my first reading of the final story, the screenplay "Blood's A Rover," will be that much sweeter. The third story, "Run, Spot, Run," ends on a particularly bleak cliffhanger, and I have waited 43 years to discover what becomes of Blood, the brilliant telepathic dog, now that he's on his own. I just hope the screenplay is worth the wait.