Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

If Sigmund Freud wrote a talking dog movie

British science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, though not a household name among general readers like his contemporaries H. G. Wells or Arthur C. Clarke, nevertheless is highly esteemed by science fiction aficionados and credited with exerting much influence on the genre. His novel Sirius was published in 1944. The title might lead one to think the book is about space travel, but Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is also known as the “Dog Star,” and this is, in fact, a science fiction novel about a dog named Sirius. This is the second book I’ve read by Stapledon. The first was Odd John, about a mutant boy born with superhuman intelligence. That was basically a modernized elaboration on J. D. Beresford’s 1911 novel The Hampdonshire Wonder. Sirius, on the other hand, reads like a retread of Odd John, except in this case the supernaturally intelligent title character is a dog instead of a human.

The narrator, an unnamed Englishman, is in love with a woman named Plaxy. One day she up and ghosts her boyfriend, absconding to her old family home in Wales. Like any ardent lover in many a formulaic romance, he shows up uninvited to reclaim her. There he discovers that Plaxy’s father is a scientist who has been conducting genetic experiments to elevate the intelligence of dogs. His prized creation is a large canine named Sirius who possesses human intelligence and can even speak English, though with somewhat faulty pronunciation. As part of the experiment, the scientist and his wife raise Sirius as if he were a human child, which in essence makes him Plaxy’s brother. Obviously, however, the two are not biologically related, so there’s nothing to stop them from falling in love with each other and thus engaging in a tortured romance, much like an interspecies variation on Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights.

This premise allows Stapledon to explore the differences between animal and human intelligence, or rather, to question what exactly constitutes humanity. He does a good job of exploring how an enhanced canine intelligence would differ from that of a human. For example, humans rely a great deal on their sense of sight, while dogs experience the world more through hearing and smell. Humans have the benefit of hands to put many of their thoughts into action, a feature greatly envied by Sirius as his mental acuity increases. The story also has a pronounced Frankenstein element to it, in that Sirius must come to terms with his own existence as a laboratory experiment. He questions his ultimate purpose in a human world, while suffering from the loneliness of being the only one of his kind. While this existential turmoil is interesting, it is also unfortunately the aspect of Sirius that is most derivative of Stapledon’s earlier work Odd John.

Sirius is admirable in that it pushes the envelope of science fiction. The novel does, after all, include a sexual relationship between a dog and a human. Though that’s never explicitly stated, it is heavily implied, which is pretty risqué for 1944 (and even 80 years later, still manages to gross out the reader). One could see how later science fiction writers might have appreciated the cutting-edge audacity of such challenging material. The problem here, however, as in Odd John, is that Stapledon’s sci-fi concepts are presented in the most boring manner imaginable. Stapledon loves to submit his characters to laborious Freudian psychoanalysis, scrutinizing their every thought and motive in great detail. While some of the ideas are thought-provoking, the storytelling is lackluster. The reader finds it difficult to care about characters that are treated like the subjects of a psychological evaluation, and all the excessive navel-gazing adds up to one truly tedious read.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon and leave me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2E51Y4HIWAT3G/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm