The Puppies of Terra has a bit of a convoluted publishing history.  It was originally a short story called White Fang Goes Dingo that Disch wrote in 1962 but didn’t get published until 1965 in If Magazine.  A year later he expanded the book under the title Mankind Under the Leash.  And then, when it was reprinted in the 70s, the title was changed to the one he preferred The Puppies of Terra.

There isn’t a huge amount of literary criticism about The Puppies of Terra on the interwebs.  But I get the impression that even to Disch this wasn’t considered one of his more serious works.  It’s definitely not as grim as The Genocides, though I believe Algis still hated it as much as Disch’s first book.  And it definitely lacks the strong themes and characterisation of his first novel.  And yet, I found plenty to like about the Puppies of Terra.

The plot is sort of SF-basic in that it’s about a bunch of God-like energy beings who take over the Earth in 1970.  These beings use their crazy, transcendental powers to enslave humanity.  But not for any particularly evil purpose.  As the title suggests, the Masters see humanity as no more than pets.  And their form of enslavement is a type of telepathic contact (except it isn’t exactly telepathic, as White Dingo, the main character, indicates).  This link is called the Leash and is the equivalent of being perpetually on Xanax or the best anti-depressant in the whole UNIVERSE!!!!

The thing that’s clever about the first half of the book is that White Dingo and his brother and his extended family enjoy being under the Leash.  And not as mindless drooling servants.  In fact, if anything the Masters give humanity the opportunity to express themselves through art and culture and creativity.  The early parts of the novel where White Dingo describes his life under the Masters, is really quite breath-taking in its imagination.  And so it’s quite abrupt (and annoying for me as the reader) when the plot finally kicks into gear about halfway through.  It’s not a huge spoiler to say that the Masters are forced to let go of the Leash.  And suddenly these people who never wanted for anything are forced to live the hard life.  At the same time they come across the Dingos, humans who refused to be enslaved by the Masters and haven’t experienced the bliss of the Leash.

At this point the books loses some of its vitality as its lurches from farce to action to opera (OK that bits great and funny) and then to a thrilling last-minute escape.  Yeah, it’s all a bit fun and very enjoyable to read, but you can’t help but feel that some of the interesting themes such as whether slavery might be a positive influence or whether it’s still just another form of cultural imperialism, is left a little by the wayside.  And the ending, which is very clever and has a number of nice twists, is so quick and so sudden that you’re sure you’ve missed out on 20 or so pages.  I suppose the fact that the book was an Ace Double meant that things needed to be tied up very quickly.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing (especially with the over-padded endings of today’s books), but it does make the end of the novel ultimately unsatisfying.

What Puppies of Terra shows is that Disch is less comfortable when dealing with actual plot.  He’s not entirely sure how to handle the mechanics of story-telling.  It’s not that he does a terrible job, it’s just that it’s not his thing.  Having said that The Puppies of Terra does highlight Disch’s wicked sense of humour and for that alone it’s worth a read.