Nick Parsons is a 27-year-old English professor at a university in Athens, Georgia, teaching English 102 to freshmen, when a Great Dane wanders into his classroom. This sparks memories of the many relationships has has had with a number of dogs over the years. These include seeing newborn puppies, dogs who have run away, his father's dog who fell off a 100-yard-high waterfall and survived, and a dog who was hit by a cement truck. He also envisions life from dogs' perspectives, including one of many dogs owned by a general 150 years ago in Russia. At the start of the spring term at the university, Nick suffers an aneurysm during class. Here, the timelines diverge. In one timeline, Nick recovers quickly and goes back to teaching and living normally with his family. Several years later, he becomes a writer with a vivid imagination. In the second timeline, Nick is forced to quit his job due to an extensive recovery period, after which he eventually goes back to school for degrees in molecular biology and astrophysics. Shortly after beginning his studies, he joins a confidential government program that uses various enhancing technologies to turn him into a superhuman cyborg. He, his cyborg companion (a dog named Canicula), and a crew of other cyborgs, then get sent into space on a discovery mission investigating a planet near the star Sirius. When they get there, they name it Elsinore. They find life on Elsinore: a species of dogs who wish for the humans to come so that they can live happily ever after.