Canids in Science Fiction; Kinship and Corporeal Language

Given their explicit, longstanding, and accepted co-evolutionary status with human animals, canids–dogs, wolves, and coyotes–may prove a productive example to re-conceptualize shifting human relations with the more than human world. My paper compares two contemporary science fiction texts to grapple with what it means to care for and be human alongside canids. Science fiction often highlights shifting relations between humans and nonhuman animals with technologies that alter animals so that they can communicate with humans. Notably, neither text I consider take positive human-animal relations for granted, nor do they require any technology to center the human-dog relation. Instead, they interpret human-dog relations as locations of empathy through corporeal language and shared kinship.

My paper “Canids in Science Fiction: Kinship and Corporeal Language” argues at the nexus of animal studies and ecocritical scholarship to explore the human-dog relations represented in C.A. Fletcher’s post-apocalyptic dystopia A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World (2019) and Eleanor Keisman’s climate fiction New Animal (2025). My paper interrogates textual examples of kinship and corporeal language to counter the assumption that dog histories cannot be understood by humans and specifically examines the messages dogs carry in post-apocalyptic narratives. Canids in these stories have their own narratives to tell that are not only understandable but critically nourishing and necessary for all beings wrestling with ecological instability. Perhaps these two stories can teach us how to approach uncertainty more tenderly. This work is part of my dissertation which traces canids in post-1945 science fiction.