Book Title: Lives of the Monster Dogs

Author: Kirsten Bakis

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux New York

ISBN: 0446674168

Review by Barbara De Vries

Hardback - 1997 291 pages (also available on audio)

After days of working overtime, or studying furiously for a certification exam, you may desire something to take your mind off the cares of this world.  For such an interlude, consider Kirsten Bakis’ first novel, Lives of the Monster Dogs.

In classic horror tradition, an evil genius perfects a race of super dogs, intelligent and strong, and outfitted with prosthetic hands and voice synthesizers, bred to serve man.  The mad scientist secludes his colony in far north Canada, where his remote and bizarre outpost remains unknown and undetected until the dogs rebel their enslavement and escape to New York City, where they become celebrities.  

The story echoes of fine traditions such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Greek myth of Pygmalion (also revisited in George Bernard Shaw’s My Fair Lady). 

In such morality plays, the author begs the question:  What limits must a creator impose upon himself?  When does the boundary of science and imagination overtake conscience and proper ethical behavior?  What does the creator actually owe to his creation?   As in typical horror tales, these questions are posed:  Why do the innocent suffer?  Why are there victims?  What do you do when it all goes wrong?

Ultimately, in these scenarios, the creation rejects or discards the creator, and in some cases, destroys the creator(s).  Even in the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the creation had choice.  Responsibilities become fuzzy in a world of gray where black and white choices do not apply once the harmony of nature has been disrupted.

What is the wisdom in dabbling with intelligent life?  The question is timely in this day and age of cloning and bio-engineering.  It has been a question in computer science for some time in our pursuit of artificial intelligence (and even visited in the recent movie “AI”).  This was even a topic of the classic comic book series of robot wars from the 1970’s where the robots created to serve man turned and rebelled.  Similarly this topic has been visited by a “Twilight Zone” episode.  Another expression was the film with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Darryl Hannah: “Blade Runner”.

Like Pandora’s box, a choice, however temping, will have results.  Not knowing the results, not knowing the future, we have only our conscience, our experience, and our beliefs upon which to draw to guide us faithfully. 

I highly recommend this book for a light, easy read.  It is entertaining, provocative and worth the time.

I can’t wait for the movie.