a boy and his dog is the book that started the apocalyptic genre. the books take place in an alternative timeline where president John F. Kennedy is not assassinated and he focuses less on the space race and more on robotics, animal intelligence and telepathy, this leads to a far more hot cold war which turns into ww3 and thus reduces the world to a irradiated, sparsly populated rock. the setting is of the united states, most survivors are men, as most women were in the cities and the men were off fighting world war 3, these survivors fight for resources, such as food, water and women.

the tale follows vic, a parentless, ethicless, morally corrupt 17 yr old whose whole world is food and sex, and his well read, telapathic dog named blood. vic and bloods relationship is based almost entirely on the fact each helps the other, vic can get blood food, and blood can get vic women. through this vic and blood meet a girl named quilla june holmes from a place called "downunder" a great big vault. after saving quilla from raiders, mutants and the general insanity of the wastelands of america, they have repeated sex and after so, the girl runs off to "downunder" , with vic in hot pursuit of her with dreams of sex and women.n eventually he find down under and leaves blood at the entrence of the vault, after several days vic and quilla return to find blood in poor shape, while not blatently said its common belief among readers that vic murders and eat quilla and remembering a question she asked blood asks " do you know what love is" vic, taken back by this statement replies " love is a boy and his dog"

so this book holds a place in my heart cause it spawned a love for the post apocalyptic worlds in games and other books, and for te fact that no matter how people describe the end of the world survivors, this book seems the most realistic of any ever made, cause after all, our base desires are to eat and  have sex. the books won awards and was eventually made into a great movie, and as such it has a place in my heart and probably many others, i think anyone who enjoys a good story of survival and the world after nukes should pick up this book.