A Boy and His Dog

Blood recalls how he met Vic in 2048, and describes him as "steadfast, responsible, and game as they come." He recounts an evening during which he and Vic go to barter scavenged items with the "82nd Airborne", the armorers for most of the local roverpacks except for that of the child-slaver "Fellini." Transported from a dock by skiff to the 82nd Airborne's boat, the pair trade wine and spent brass for fresh ammunition, and Vic is invited to stay and drink. Blood declines to drink, and is repeatedly insulted by the gang, until the goading drives him to attempt to bite one of them. The gang member knocks Blood down and points a rifle at Blood's head, and Vic immediately shoots the gang member. As Vic covers the remaining stunned gang members, Blood climbs into Vic's pack and passes out. He awakens again with them on the dock and Vic running for their lives. Upon reaching safety, Vic unceremoniously dumps Blood onto the ground and storms off in anger at having lost access to "the only armorer in the territory." Blood initially lets him go, but thinks better of it after considering the alternatives, and saves Vic from walking into a crater in the road containing a "Screamer" (a green corpse-like mutant). The pair run miles up the road, and having reconciled, sit down to eat.

Vic, aged 15, was born in and scavenges throughout the wasteland of the former southwestern United States as a "solo" (as opposed to a member of a "roverpack" gang). Vic is most concerned with food and sex. Having lost both of his parents, he has no formal education and does not understand ethics or morality. He is accompanied by a well-read, misanthropic, telepathic dog named Blood, who helps him locate women, in return for food. Blood cannot forage for himself, due to the same genetic engineering that granted him telepathy. The two steal for a living, evading "roverpacks" (gangs) and mutants. Blood and Vic have an occasionally antagonistic relationship, though they realize that they need each other.

At a movie house, Blood claims to smell a woman, and the pair track her to an abandoned YMCA building. There, they meet Quilla June Holmes, a teenaged girl from "Downunder", a society located in a large underground nuclear vault. Before Vic can rape her, Blood informs the pair that a roverpack has tracked them to the building and they have to fight them off. After killing a number of them, the trio hides in a boiler and set the structure on fire.

Vic finally has sex with Quilla June, and though she protests at first, she begins to come on to him. Blood takes an instant disliking to her, but Vic ignores him. Vic and Quilla June have sex repeatedly but eventually she attacks him and takes off to return to her underground community. Vic, furious at her deception, follows her, despite Blood's warnings. Blood remains at the portal on the surface.

Downunder has an artificial biosphere complete with forests and underground cities. One, named Topeka after the ruins of the city it lies beneath, is fashioned in a surreal mockery of 1950s rural innocence. Vic is captured by the ruling council (the Better Business Bureau). They confess that Quilla June was sent to the surface in order to lure a man to Downunder. The population of Topeka is becoming sterile, and the babies that are born are usually female. They feel that Vic, despite his crudeness and savage behavior, will be able to reinvigorate that male population. Vic is first elated to learn that he is to impregnate the female population, but he quickly grows jaded of his surroundings and plots his escape.

Quilla June is reunited with Vic and they plan to escape together. Vic uses the fact that Quilla June's father secretly desires sex with her as a distraction, incapacitating him so that they can escape.

On the surface, Vic and Quilla June discover that Blood is starving and near death, having been attacked by radioactive insects and other "things". Quilla June tries to get Vic to leave Blood and take off with her. Knowing he will never survive without Blood's guidance and, more importantly, that Blood will not survive without care and food, Vic faces a difficult situation. It is implied that he kills his new love and cooks her flesh to save Blood's life. The novella ends with Vic remembering her question as Blood eats: "Do you know what love is?" and he concludes, "Sure I know. A boy loves his dog."

The novella won the Nebula Award for Best Novella upon its release in 1969 and was also nominated for the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

The 1975 science fiction film directed by L.Q. Jones was controversial for alleged misogyny; the script included lines that were not in Ellison's original stories and that authors such as Joanna Russ found to be objectionable.[5] The film's final line is from Blood: "Well, I'd say she certainly had marvelous judgement, Albert, if not particularly good taste." Ellison disavowed this addition as a "moronic, hateful chauvinist last line, which I despise."[6] Ellison did, however, accept that the ending remained popular with fans, saying: "I would have kept the original last line from the original story, which I think is much more human and beguiling than the sort of punchline that L.Q. Jones used. But L.Q. knew what he was doing in terms of the market, I suppose."[7] On the other hand, Harlan also loved the movie (as stated in an interview conversation with L.Q. Jones on the Shout Factory Blu Ray); after Jones screened it to him, he said it was exactly what the story was supposed to be on screen. It was a few days after he brought up his problems, mostly concerning the way Blood talked about the girl during the locker room scene when they first meet.

Although Blood is now back on his feet and travelling west, the pair's situation deteriorates as the guilt-ridden Vic begins having hallucinations of a ghostly Quilla June, which Blood also experiences through their telepathic link. Due to his preoccupation, Vic stumbles into an encounter with a roving gang of child soldiers and slaves led by the adult "Fellini", and badly breaks his ankle while attempting to escape. At Blood's suggestion, Vic climbs into a hollow tree stump to hide, and Blood covers him with leaves and dirt before going to hide himself. Hours later, with the gang gone, Blood returns to find the stump surrounded by giant spiders. Driving them off, Blood finds Vic in a hopeless, almost catatonic state, and despite Blood's appeals, Vic allows himself to be cocooned by one of the spiders. Blood runs off as the spider finishes and begins to look for new prey, and he continues west, now haunted by the ghost of Vic rather than Quilla June.

The reasons given by Ellison for this abrupt ending have differed over the years. One relates to his anger over the L.Q. Jones ending of the film, as detailed above. The other is, according to Ellison, essentially a desire to stop his fans from requesting more stories about the two characters. Ellison claimed at the time of the film's release that he had said all he wanted to say about Vic and Blood, and that there would be no more sequels.

Blood's a Rover, a fix-up combining the short stories, novella, and an adaptation of the unproduced 1977 pilot teleplay, was announced by Ace Books in the early 1980s, but was not published. In the introduction to Vic and Blood, dated 25 March 2003, Ellison referred to "the final, longest section is in screenplay form—and they're bidding here in Hollywood, once again, for the feature film and tv rights—and one of these days before I go through that final door, I'll translate it into elegant prose, and the full novel will appear". In 2013, Ellison resumed working on book, now subtitled "The Complete Adventures of a Boy and His Dog". It was published by Subterranean Press on 20 June 2018, eight days before Ellison's death.