Reviewed by D. D. "Doc" Shade   —   August 8, 2003

A Dog is Man's Best Fiend

Or

Whatever Happened to Baby Augustus?

Stephen King recommended this book to me. No? OK, not personally. Tucked neatly into the back of King's, On Writing, there exists a rather lengthy list of recommended books. One of the salient points of On Writing is that if a person does not have time to read, they do not have the tools to write. King suggests these books noting that they are not intended to be a complete list.

I have started working my way down the list by reading whichever book happens to be in the Appoquinimink Public Library collection. Middletown, DE is not even middle-sized so not all of the books are there. This being the case, it didn't take long to get to the "B" section in fiction. The title of the book was enough to spark my curiosity.

Does Lives Of The Monster Dogs qualify as a lost book? I think so as it has never been checked out of the library by anyone before myself, a mainstream publishing house did not publish it, and was never on any bestseller list to the best of my knowledge. It may be that Lives Of The Monster Dogs is only lost in Middletown, DE but I venture that it will be unknown to most visitors of this web site. It is also the author's first and only novel.

What is a monster dog? I opened this book with a single preconception, that of a Great Dane or Doberman Pinscher ready to tear my throat out -- huge dogs that inspire fear by mere size alone. Dogs who can look you in the eye without jumping. Well, big dogs are timid compared to the dogs in this book. What makes the monster dogs so monstrous is that they have had their DNA manipulated to give them intelligence equal to mankind. And we all know that the most dreadful predator on this planet is man. The monster dogs are mass murderers dressed in Prussian military style clothes masquerading as human. That's enough to make me sleep with a light on.

First, some background. An army of monster dogs with human intelligence, synthetic voice boxes and prosthetic hands was the brainchild of a sadistic scientist named Augustus Rank. Tim Richards paints Rank as half-Mengele, half-Hitler. * As a disturbed pre-adolescent, Rank's experimental attempts to graft the wings of a bird on a rat, for example, graduated from small animals to large ones (his surgery instruments were crude so he needed bigger animals so as not to miss reconnecting any important parts). Rank is caught red handed (pun intended) after surgically removing the legs from a cow, switching right to left and vice versa, and then putting them back on. Rank is caught by the cow's owner and is faced with severe consequences. Fortunately for Augustus, the farmer's best friend Dr. Muller, the most famous surgeon in the world, just happens to be visiting the farmer and has come along to hunt down the cow mutilator (Agustus has done this before). The surgeon immediately recognizes the superiority of Rank's surgical skills, pays for the cow, and takes Augustus with him to study and train in Berlin. The plan to create an army of dogs is conceived in 1889 and sold to Kaiser Wilhelm II for funding. With the Kaiser's financial support, Rank gathers his followers (they are a given with no explanation) and establishes a secret society and laboratory in the Canadian wilderness that came to be known as Rankstadt. Nearly a hundred years pass while Rank and his people remain isolated from the world.

It took those one hundred years to evolve monster dogs capable of walking upright, speaking, and having opposable thumbs. They were made in the image of man and Augustus Rank was their creator (GIGO). Yet he did not live to see the fruition of his dream. For unknown reasons, Rank committed suicide many years before. As with most messianic myths and beliefs, Rank left a mysterious note promising to return someday and lead his army of monster dogs to victory. Victory over what is never quite clear. One can only assume Rank's goal was world domination. What would one expect from someone raised in the largest and most important of the German states with Berlin soon to be the capitol of Nazi Germany?

On a cool, fall day of 2009, the perfected monster dogs are in slavery to the humans who created them. With their huge intellects they fetch and carry, clean and sew, cook and serve. They are led in a rebellion by an outcast monster dog, Mops Hacker, wherein they kill all of the humans and burn Rankstadt. After murdering the men, women, and children in Rankistadt, the monster dogs move to New York City. How is it that any city as sophisticated as New York could accept these murderous hounds? Yet, they settle in with no more fuss than a change of owners in the house next door to your own. Neither are they silent about their origins and history (although there is only one dog who acts as their press agent). Perhaps it's the shear size of New York that makes their transition seamless. New York and Ellis Island have often been referred to as the "melting pot of America." Here thousands mass migrated from China, Ireland, Italy, and the Confederacy during and after the Civil War. The monster dogs dissolve into the landscape even singling out a section of New York in which to live (not unlike Chinatown). No one questions them much although the press is hot on their coattails (since the monster dogs dressed in 19^th century Prussian fashions, the use of coattails here is not a cliché).

Cleo Pira, a human female chosen to be their spokesperson by the monster dogs, tells their lives. She seems to have been chosen because of her naiveté and her child-like acceptance of the monster dogs. Indeed, she drops out of college as more and more of her time is spent with the dogs and writing about the dogs. She grows from simple curiosity to genuine love and concern for their well-being. Cleo is able to piece together their history from papers saved during the destruction of Rankstadt, from the diary of Ludwig Von Sacher (a monster dog historian), and from sections of Augustus Rank's journals. Some of the personal notes from Augustus Rank and other documents were saved from the flames of Rankstadt and it is from these that the Lives Of The Monster Dogs are recreated. The monster dogs are only able to live in New York for a few years until they are swallowed by the city.

In the tradition of Animal Farm, the monster dogs are exaggerations of us through which Bakis gives commentary. We are not all represented but the more salient types of our race can be found within the society of monster dogs. The lover, the historian, the intellectual, the archetypal female, the liberated female, and of course the murderer. The complete annihilation of the humans in Rankstadt immediately lifted the monster dogs to the level of humanity. Philip K. Dick should have been there to welcome them into the human race as in the movie Screamers. In that movie, based on the P. K. Dick short story Second Variety, Hendricksson (Peter Weller) says something like, "Welcome to the human race. You've learned to kill each other" to one of the self-evolved androids posing as a human.

The book also contains a pesudo-Christian "return of the messiah" theme. The reason the monster dogs were enslaved in the first place was because after their perfection (there were many grotesque failures along the way), Rank's followers did not know what to do next. They were patiently waiting for Rank to return as promised on his suicide note. Only the dogs seemed unconcerned with this legend. Of course, we know that dead is dead (at least for the time being -- this web page is sponsored by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and these essays are written by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we believe in life after death but can accept the authors point of view) and the reader is never fooled into believing that Rank will actually return. Yet it was that very belief that led to the destruction of Rankstadt.

I do wish I could pick up the telephone and call Stephen King to ask why he included this book on his recommended reading list. Is it on the list because it is so well written or because it lacks something? To this reader, the latter seems more apropos. I found the book to contain various lose ends that are never resolved. Although the writing is palatable, it is not a well-crafted book and contains a plot that is often hard to follow or perhaps never fully materializes.

The year is 2009 and yet society and most technology are pretty much unchanged. There is a feeling that the author set the book a ways into the future because it helps to make the creation of the monster dogs more believable. The only evidence of technological advancement is referenced in the beginning of the book when we discover that Cleo carries a small ray or zap gun for protection when she comes home from college late at night. As a reader of Jules Verne, I could have accepted the creation of the monster dogs even if the novel had been set in 1880 or, as a reader of William R. Forstchen, if the year was 1863. Moreover, there exists the monster dog's obsession with Prussian dress and social mores of more than a hundred years past. This is explained as the result of the isolation of Rankstadt from the rest of the world for so long. Kaiser Wilhelm was in power when Augustus Rank fled his country to raise his army of monster dogs in the Canadian wilderness. Yet, the monster dogs are so very humanlike that one would expect them to want to adopt at least the latest fashion trends of New York. Indeed they take great care when they dress to be tidy and formal in their Prussian fashions (most of their clothing is paramilitary). If life in Rankstadt was so distasteful as to lead to mass murder and destruction, one would think the monster dogs would reject the fashions of their past and accept the fashions of New York in 2009. On the other hand, I also wondered why the monster dogs did not reject clothing all together as a statement that they are monster dogs and not human. Instead, it seems that they do all within their power to be as human-like as possible. Not unlike Data on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" when he should have embraced his differences instead. There was one dog that rejected human values, refused to wear clothes, and led the revolution of the monster dogs -- Mops Hacker.

What becomes of the monster dogs in New York City? Are they able to co-exist with other humans? Do they lust after or crave "creature" comforts (no pun intended)? Are there power struggles within the ranks? Do the humans of New York City ever fully accept or reject the dogs? Do they survive living in the modern world or are they destined to be another Jonestown or another Charles Manson family. You, dear visitor will have to read the book to discover exactly why the monster dogs are so monstrous.

All in all, the book was an interesting experiment but left me with an unsatisfied feeling. Not unlike eating at McDonalds and being able to view patrons of a really good restaurant entering and leaving with looks of great anticipation or satisfaction while you grind away at your McBurger. Even though I'm only giving this book two-and-one-half stars, I am not sorry that I read the book. It does have one redeeming quality; it raises a large number of questions in your mind, which lead to some interesting thought exercises. I'll return it to the Appoquinimink public library tonight where it can go on hiding until it ends up in the next library book sale. Perhaps when that day comes the library will call me and award the book to me for being its only reader in Delaware.

* * *

Kirsten Bakis was born in Switzerland and raised in New York. She was living in an old church converted into apartments across from the World Trade Center when she finished the book in 1997. Ms. Bakis graduated from New York University in 1994 and then received a Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where I gather she began writing the Lives of the Monster Dogs. In 1998 Ms. Bakis was a runner up (short listed) for the Orange Prize for Fiction. You can read a short biography and a rather lengthy interview at the Orange Literature Prize web site (http://195.157.68.238/projects/futurebiogs.html). An alternate and amusing view of Lives Of The Monster Dogs entitled "Planet of the Scooby Doo: Reflections on 'Lives of the Monster Dogs' by Kirsten Bakis" by Tim Richards can be found at www.thei.aust.com/books97/btlrvmonsterdogs.html. Mr. Richards compares the book to the "Far Side" cartoons of Gary Larsen. At the time of this writing, Ms. Bakis has not published any other books.

* http://www.thei.aust.com/books97/btlrvmonsterdogs.html

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