Keepers of the house by Lester Del Rey
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Keepers of the house by Lester Del Rey is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It follows a lone dog in a ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape, focusing on memory, loss, and the aftermath of misused technology. An old, intelligent dog named King is drawn by scent and dream back to a ruined university city, where he finds the Promethean Laboratory and discovers his long-lost master, “Doc,” dead beside a
tape machine that still plays his voice. Through King’s memories we glimpse the collapse: a hated tower that broadcast a tingling power, failed experiments that revived rats and altered dogs, a plague of rabbits, and desperate rocket launches that carried infants away as civilization died. Chasing a white lab rat, King shelters from a storm in a crashed rocket and gorges on leftover rations; lightning later ignites the wired lab and consumes Doc’s remains. In the morning King returns, confirms the finality of death, gives a single mourning howl from the bridge, and turns south along the river to survive, leaving the last house he kept behind. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Del Rey, Lester, 1915-1993 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Emshwiller, Ed, 1925-1990 |
| Title | Keepers of the house |
| Original Publication | New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1955. |
| Series Title | Produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1956 (Vol. 4, No. 6). |
| Credits | Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Dogs -- Fiction |
| Subject | Apocalyptic fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 77527 |
| Release Date | Dec 22, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 281 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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