Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I'm thinking of changing my default icon. I've used COR Thistle for so many years, and I still love it, but it keeps throwing me off now that I'm playing WoW Thistle so much. I'll probably change to this one, I think, because it makes me all happy to see it.

I've been trying to remember a (book? short story?) all day. I know I read it not too too long ago, so it must have been in ebook format, but I looked through all my read books and can't find it. If it was a physical book I'm doomed, since almost all of them have long since been donated.

Scifi book. The aliens were dog-like, but the interesting thing was that one "person" was made up of a group of the aliens. A lone member would be insane because it would only be part of a brain without the rest of the "pack". Since they were dog-like they had no hands, but two members could work together using their mouths to function like hands. The pack size could vary from three to (eight?) members, and different members were good at different things.

The main alien character was somehow special, with the switching in and out of members he somehow kept a memory back to the earliest members, even though the physical bodies were all now different.

Some humans (crash landed?) on the planet, the parents were killed. A boy was taken by the evil alien and put in with a pack of "puppies" (so the puppies would learn the human language, I think). They bonded together.

I don't recall what happened to the girl, other than she wasn't with the boy. I think she was somehow with the good aliens, and they got to the ship and set off the emergency signal and drew other humans to the planet.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? It's been killing me all day!

Edit: Found it. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I remembered I read that book, saw it on my 'read' ebook shelf, but apparently I forgot the plot! Irony of ironies, I'm reading a short story collection by Vinge and the story I'm currently on reminded me of that book, that's why I was searching for it. And wiki tells me why! "Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella, "The Blabber", which occurs after Fire."

I have so many books I want to reread, but I have a ton of new ones I haven't gotten through yet (and a bad habit of buying more on a regular basis!).

Also Google impresses me. Searching for "alien dog-like group boy" gave me the right thing as the first result. ...and damned scares me. I just googled again after making the edit, to make sure the results were the same. This post now shows up on the first page of results! Minutes after I posted it!

(itsbacon! Don't click on the cut or comments! Or else! :) )

I love RP for many reasons, however there's a unique good thing in my current RP: The character I play has a thing for music, and various other characters are teaching him songs to sing. RL songs are being used, though generally they're not popular stuff you'd hear on most radio stations. I'm learning so many good new songs!

I heard a story about this group a year or so ago on NPR. I have no idea why I didn't follow it up then...

( What may be my new most favorite song ever is back here! )

I can't stop listening to it! Over and over! Though he likely will never see this, much <3 to Franzis for using this song!

Edit: Google is damned scary. I decided to check and see if Franzis maybe had a LJ, so I googled "Franzis RP" to see what would come up (I always start more general first, to see what interesting other things might be out there). This post came up as result #4. Less than 30 seconds after I posted it. Google is stalking me!