Mysterious cyborg collie

I have no idea what's going on in this uncredited scan from a unnamed Cyrillic (Russian?) book illustrating the many ways in which a collie dog could be converted to a terrifying, but friendly mecha walker cyborg.

You Don't Want to Know (via Super Punch)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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dannysland

Part #8 seems to involve a DEVO “Energy Dome” hat.
social_maladroit

…Ð“Ð”Ð…Ð…Ð‡Ð„?
Anonymous

Lassie=healthy economy. Currently in intensive care. This is what it will look like after corporate-funded politicians get done with it. All the robot parts will be provided by various corporations, with a huge profit, but they’ll try to keep a good face on it. It will not really be alive, however.
eyearmy

The post that started it all: http://hotshkin.livejournal.com/117151.html
- highlyverbal
  
  Shopped.
Anonymous

The first picture is remarkably similar to a pic from Marshal Law – a strip in Toxic, an alternative 80′s british comic.
Roger Stanton

I for one welcome our … oh, forget it.
Anonymous

It its definitely russian it reads

(First scan)
Fig 14. LLSS (The V.R. Lebedeva Life Support System)
General external view schematic of the device

(Second Scan)
Fig 19. Modified diagram LLS-5(K):
a- dog breed “Collie”: b- Dog’s head hooked into the LLS-5 (LLS-5K) Device: c-

I can’t translate the last part accurately unfortunately :(

Very Interesting design
microdot

I had a copy of a Russian scientific journal from the early 70′s which actually had photos of a cyborg dog head experiment. It would seem that they had gone past the drawing board diagram stage in the illustration. I used the journal for collage art work which is long gone now….
GregS

Now, if you replace the collie’s head with a shark’s, you’ll really have something exciting!

I for one welcome our new robot shark overlords.
Anonymous

Very well done, but obviously a fake. Nice work.
rebdav

I was one of those creepy kids who was always trying to find a way to hang out in university science departments. I remember even in the 80′s the conspiracy theories of what the Soviets were up to.
Eark_the_Bunny

CLICK-CLACK, CLICK-CLACK! What is it girl? Oh, no R2D2 is stuck in the well! Somebody e-mail the sheriff! And somebody get this dog another quart of oil.
JhmL

Squirrel!
- AirPillo
  
  “I hate squirrels!” >:/
Anonymous

The top one reads “life preservation apparatus”, which I guess is obvious. The bottom one is “modification schemes”, which is also obvious. As others have pointed out, Russians have long been into these kinds of experiments, and I remember one of the most popular scifi novels when I was a kid was “The Head of Professor Dowell” by Alexander Belyaev, which basically described something similar to the top image.
13enster

It’s all fun and games until robocollie tries to hump someones leg…
Anonymous

Reminds me of Boilerplate :
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/intro.html
RedShirt77

When you see sick shit like this, you have to think that maybe the villiam in the human centipede isn’t all that far fetched.
- RedShirt77
  
  For the love of all that is decent, they chopped off a dogs head, kept it alive for hours and poked it in the eye constantly to make it respond to stimuli.
  
  Russians need to stay away from my dog.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s like the x-files movie (the second one, with the mad russian scientist).
Anonymous

It is a fake, albeit a nice one :)
CoyoteMarie

Reminds me of this excellently, poetically weird sci-fi novel: Lives of the Monster Dogs!

http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Monster-Dogs-Kirsten-Bakis/dp/0446674168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299193556&sr=8-1
wood29

Of course this uncredited image comes from a Tumblr. Once. Again.

As previously mentioned, the author is here : http://hotshkin.livejournal.com/

(you will find more picture ton that blog if you scroll down a bit, and if you’re going to reblog it, GIVE CREDITS WHERE THEY ARE DUE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE)
- Ian
  
  Yes, tumblrs are terrible for giving credit, but as to whether the author you cite deserves credit *for taking photos of a book written by someone else…*
Brainspore

Is this one of those newfangled interplanetary “Rovers” I keep hearing about?
Maxload

So this is what Kirsten Bakis has been doing for the last fifteen years rather then getting on with a second novel!
HubrisSonic

I for one welcome our cani… wait, i’ll come in again..
sirps

Here’s video of the severed head experiments!
http://www.eversostrange.com/2011/03/03/living-severed-dog-head/
- lilomar
  
  That is the most amazing nightmare-fuel I have seen in a long time.
anatidaeling

Will it listen nonjudgmentally to young children read aloud?
Anonymous

This is clearly a fake. Look here for source: http://alex-serdyuk.livejournal.com/4802852.html. Cool-looking illustrations were pasted into one of the soviet military field manual.
Anonymous

Timmy! if you want to get out of the well… come with me!

robo lassie!
Boondocker

Reminds me of We3.
Anonymous

“…Consequently this project got the name â€œThe Kollieâ€ and existed for almost 10 years. Under orders from the Central Committee on 4 th January 1969 project â€œThe Kollie” was closed down, and all the information became classified…”

here more: http://www.behance.net/gallery/The-Kollie/953880
ecologist

In Soviet Russia, the dog walks … ahhh, someone had to do it.
- mdh
  
  thank you.
Eutychus

This type of experiment is mentioned in CS Lewis’ book That Hideous Strength and forms a key element of the plot.
Anonymous

The other thing to remember is that there are two different talking dog movies in various stages of production right now — both adapted from books — The Dogs of Babel and Lives of the Monster Dogs. This could be concept art/viral nonsense for either – as there are parts of both books to which this could be applicable.
Snig

A further chapter on how to convert it to a unicorn might not take the curse off.
Xeno

Art book. next.
SamSam

It reminds me of the book Lives of the Monster Dogs, which I think Cory would like.

It tells the tale of German (or Russian?) dogs created as a race of intelligent, talking beasts, part dog and part machine, who had revolted and now form part of high society (or society’s freak show, depending on who you ask). Very dark.
- Stefan Jones
  
  I wrote a double review for Science Fiction Eye #15 back in 1997, comparing Bakis’s Lives of the Monster Dogs with Stapledon’s Sirius.
  
  Slightly edited version here:
  
  Serious Dogs
  
  * * *
  
  If you put my Belgian shepherd in a cyborg body, every tree in the neighborhood that looked remotely like it had a squirrel in it would be reduced to splinters.
  - genre slur
    
    Imagine two mecha-dogs with territory issues crossing paths. Hang on, humans goin’ for a ride, bwahahahaha!
Gainclone

Lemme guess. It’s a treatment for a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie.
Giant Robot Architect

This makes me miss my dog.

Good boy Bo. Good boy.
Anonymous

Reminds me of We3:
http://www.amazon.com/We3-Grant-Morrison/dp/1401204953/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_a
fnc

Those hardpoints on the shoulders are perfect for mounting squirrel seeking missiles. What could possibly go wrong?

“Honey the dog is dragging something into the yard again. It looks like the tail section of a 747.”
DrPretto

I think we need a new cyberounk anime movie called:
“DOG IN THE SHELL”
JeffF

There was a documentary on PBS I saw a couple years ago about heart transplants. It had some film of early work where some ethically challenged fifties scientists were severing the heads of monkeys and keeping them alive for I think up to a few hours attached to life support systems.
Felton / Moderator

Wendolene Ramsbottom: He’s malfunctioning.

Wallace: Mal what?

Wendolene: Malfunctioning. Preston is a cyberdog.

Wallace: Cyber what?

Wendolene: A robot. Daddy created him for good, but he’s turned out evil!
genre slur

Can anyone who claims this is fake please present evidence while doing so, or don’t bother making the assertion (anon#6). Anon#7 could you please repost that link — what you threw down is dead, and I really want to check it. Skepticism w/out verification is as annoying as blind faith. I don’t believe this doggie-thing is real (the hotshkin clips of mecha-collie notwithstanding, they’re quite funny) — and I do not believe it is fake. Multi-model agnostic, yo. Nothing in the stream seems to pass for reasonable evidence either way. Regardless, very cool thing to imagine about. Charles Fort would love it.
- chromecow
  
  Occam’s Razor suggests that in this case, perhaps the burden of proof is on those who are suggesting the design for a contemporary-looking fully-autonomous cyborg topped by the severed-but-still-living head of a Collie was in fact included in a 70s-era Soviet technical manual.
  
  Also, where is the boiler for producing all the steam needed to run this thing?
  
  Fake, I say!
gmr2048

I seem to recall reading about this, and other oddball experiments in the book “Elephants on Acid”:

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Acid-Bizarre-Experiments-Original/dp/0156031353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299160534&sr=8-1
Anonymous

Reminds me of WE 3
http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/graphic_novels/?gn=3717
gmr2048

Also, am I the only one wanting unicorns after that severed-dog’s-head video? *shudder*
capl

It’s a reverse Bulgakov.
Anonymous

bethesda need to hire this artist, STAT. fallout online needs him!
social_maladroit

This reminds me of the human experimentation the Cylons did in Battlestar Galactica, especially in Razor and The Farm.

“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.” Woof.
Mister44

So what the hell is this for? Obviously not real. If the robot design was waaaaayyy more simple and utilitarian then it could have passed off as a real 50s design.
Suds

DAMN IT! Those plans were to be kept secret. Now we will have to move to phase II before full testing is finished. I blame wikileaks, and when the leaker is found— They’ll be thrown to the dogs!
MajorMattMason

Am I the only one who thinks that transplanting the head of an experimental animal onto a GIANT ROBOT BODY would not be the wisest thing to do?

“Doc-torr… mean… to… Shep..! Cause… pain… Let’s… see… how… Doc-torr… like… it… when… head…come…off..!” Bark, bark…
yeat

I have to laugh looks legit but NOT. In the early 60′s performed a bizarre experiment in which the took a excised “living” brain (not a head or skull just the brain) from one dog and embedded it the throat area of another utilizing the arteries in the neck of the recipient dog to provide the circulation. Imagine being the donor brain. Anyway this drawing is crap and I would say. Gotta laugn just as most alien now depicted in media have adopted the gaze from Spielbergs “Encounter” Aliens’ Robots now have the Wasp waist gorilla arms that became popular after Robo Cop Terminator etc.Alas the robots depicted in the 39 worlds fair were trash can looking numbers. As far as the Life magazine please cite what date it was published, same goes for other journal cites. And oh yes, the soviets in any case NEVER retouched photos
Anonymous

“Gimmie treats! You have ten seconds to comply.”
Lobster

I really love my dog. But you know what would make her way better? Flood lights and metal claw hands.
jenjen

There was a patent in 1985 for a method of keeping an animal head alive. According to the lore, he did it precisely to prevent other people from using the method in order to slow down research in this area.
See patent here:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DxktAAAAEBAJ&dq=perfusing+animal+head
(Please do note the name of the company to which the patent was assigned – how that snuck by the patent office is beyond me.)

More info: http://oddbooks.co.uk/oddbooks/fleming.html
cinemajay

W0101001010F!
SkullHyphy

Friendly? Once they can open their own cans of dog food, they’ll want to be the alpha dog.
edinblack

A Russian-speaking philosopher friend of mine responded: “It is indeed a collie-cyborg, or, more particularly, an ASZhL, which stands for ÐÐ²Ñ‚Ð¾Ð¼Ð°Ñ‚ ÑÐ¾Ñ…Ñ€Ð°Ð½ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ñ Ð¶Ð¸Ð·Ð½Ð¸ Ð¸Ð¼. Ð›ÐµÐ±ÐµÐ´ÐµÐ²Ð°: Lebedev’s Automat for the Preservation of Life. A piece on the website of the newspaper Komsomol’skaya Pravda suggests it’s probably a fake: http://blog.kp.ru/users/algor42/post153824312/“
Anonymous

Here is the translation of the captions:

TOP PAGE
“Drawing 14. Apparatus for Preserving Life created by V. R. Lebedeva (A.P.L.L.)
Comprehensive blueprints for the outer appearance of the apparatus.”

BOTTOM PAGE
“Drawing 19: Blueprints for modifications of the A.P.L.
a â€“ Collie breed dog. B â€“ dogâ€™s head is connected to the A.P.L.-5 apparatus. c. A.P.L.-5K is combined with the L.O.D. system.”
danby

It looks a bit like “dog” from Half Life 2, except with an actual dog’s head. Scary.
NeonCat

You should always keep a Frisbee around in case you are attacked by a cyborg collie. You can throw it and run away and, if you’re lucky, it will fall over trying to lick its balls.
DreAmeoba

Lassie! Build home!!!
JoshP

My weak Cyrillic agrees with above, but I’d say this is legit. The Sov’s were nutty about dog science. Where we sent monkeys into space they sent silka and belka and whomever.
This was also in some movie, apocryphal, yeah, but I buy it as 50′s raygun science.
- DrPretto
  
  Laika: First animal (dog) sent to space.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
danwarning

Having witnessed the whole mysterious thing as it progressed, from the start in Hotshkin’s Livejournal, I always assumed it was him faking this via expert use of Photoshop. Especially the 3-D rendered shots he posted without texture.

To me, it’s clear it’s an elaborately designed, fun, artistic art project. Sure, it’s probably based on really sick experiments, but this is all tongue in cheek.
cymk

I for one welcome our new robot collie overlords.
serpent

The picture is completely wrong. The right hand has was supposed to bear the zero-point energy field manipulator.
Anonymous

Wasn’t there a Russian (mad) scientist in the ’50s that kept alive the head of Dogs within an apparatus similar to this?
- Cochituate
  
  There was an article in Life Magazine that showed a dog’s head sewn on to the back of another dog, and both dogs obviously being alert and looking around. The article said that they two headed dog lived for a few days. I was 8 years old in 1960, and I always raided my aunt and uncle’s Life and Time magazines to maintain the scrapbook of space race stories that I decided to make. That Russian dog article scared the CRAP out of me.
Anonymous

many ways?
Anonymous

it says that this is life preservation apparatus by V. R. Lebedev.
- mark zero
  
  Lebedev? Are we being trolled by the Art Lebedev Studio?
Anonymous

yes, it’s russian.
technogeek

Want That Book. I *must* have something of that sort casually left open in my library…
dancentury

Before Charlie Sheen was an F-18 made out of Tigers fueled by Yayo and driven by porn stars, he as a giant robot with Lassie’ head.
mdh

Clearly none of you realize this is a sex-toy post.
- genre slur
  
  You get the winning points, as my judgments go.
Anonymous

pasted from here:

http://www.tzeh.ru/izotov/2011/02/08/564/
potkin

See Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940):
http://www.archive.org/details/Experime1940
chemical404

life preservation apparatus by V. R. Lebedev.

these old soviet science books for school are cool. i especially like astronomy ones. Need to did into the attic when i get home.
burritoflats

“It was at this point that the head of Lassie – Overlord of the Fifth Dogstar was removed by force and placed gingerly in an artificial resuscitation airtight enclosure for future study…”