“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" (2007)

I liked this long story with the long title by Kij Johnson a lot. It’s perfectly unclear about some things—notably, “the Change”—but highly specific about other things, such as oral storytelling traditions of domesticated dogs. After the Change, domesticated animals can talk. It’s part of the Change. The result for many dogs (as well as other household and farm pets) is to be rejected and abandoned by their owners or caretakers. Johnson is likening their situations in some ways to slavery, which doesn’t entirely work, but she pays close attention to the way pets are often abused. Whether it’s “good training” or just lost temper episodes doesn’t matter as much now that they evidently have something to say about it. It’s somehow just not going well with many people. I like the way Johnson boils it down to primary evolutionary terms, the latest chapter in the uneasy alliance between wolves and monkeys. There’s a lot of natural pathos to this story too, as domesticated dogs are much closer to “cute” and further from their fiercer wolf origins. Johnson ducks what these dogs are saying that is so upsetting to people, which is probably the wise course. Anything specific could well have been disappointing. It’s enough to know they are being abandoned in large numbers. The really great part of this story are the stories the dogs tell. They come across like ancient myths, with certain tics and conventions always observed. The story is always about One Dog and the first sentence is always, “This is the same dog.” They’re numbered, starting with #2. A lot of odd business here and some quirks of style. The story is very big and very focused all at once, with vignettes from the history of monkeys and wolves. I found it in the Edited By anthology edited by Ellen Datlow, a kind of retrospective or self-selected greatest hits from Datlow’s long and prolific editing career. In turn, this story was published originally in a 2007 themed anthology called The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, edited by Datlow and her long-time Year’s Best partner Terri Windling. I like how Johnson really fell all over it and how a themed anthology sparked one of the best stories from this century I’ve read yet. Caveat: I haven’t read that many stories from this century yet. But this is a good one—eerie, funny, heartbreaking, and effective. I also have to agree with Datlow’s afterword: “Here is where you find out that I’m a sucker for animal stories, especially bittersweet ones.”

Edited By, ed. Ellen Datlow
Read and/or listen to story online.