Spaceships and magic

Over at tor.com, a post by Judith Tarr about Andre Norton’s Moon of Three Rings

I really liked that one! Probably because it fell neatly between the period where I read nothing but animal stories and the period where I really got into fantasy. This is the one where one protagonist kinda accidentally lets his consciousness and self be transferred into the body of an animal. Of course it was the animal on the front cover that probably caught my eye.

Now, of course, I immediately am bothered by the weak topline and not-very-good croup. I think it’s out at the elbow, too. Ah, adulthood. I imagine the creature in Norton’s imagination was well-constructed and sound. I loved the way it looked as a child. I’d forgotten about this image, but now I recognize where various other doglike-but-not-dog animals in various unwritten stories have come from.

Other great stories where someone changes into a dog (a real dog, or nearly, rather than a doglike animal like the one in Norton’s book):

Dogsbody, by DWJ, obviously. Though there the person who changes into a dog was never human, but a luminary — a star.

Also, The Dog Days of Arthur Cane, by T. Ernesto Bethancourt. I loved that book and read it many times. This is a much more down-to-earth story of a normal teenager who gets turned into a shaggy-dog type of mutt. Really great story. Let me see . . . looks like it came out in 1976. Yeah, I’m sure it’s long fallen off everyone’s radar. Well, if you happen to have a kid who is into animals and dogs, see if you can find a copy. It’s pretty pricey as a secondhand book on Amazon, I notice, with a range from $12 to way over $200 (!).

I don’t know if I can think of any other person-turned-into-dog stories just this minute. Horses, yes. Dun Lady’s Jess by Doranna Durgin springs to mind, though in that case it was the horse who turned into a woman.

How about you all, anybody want to recommend a person-turns-into-animal or animal-into-person story?

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