Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Philip K. Dick - Clans of the Alphane Moon

Reviews
 

This is one of Dicks best. I am a massive fan and really enjoyed this novel. Yet another book filled with Dicks dark humour and paranoia set in a vivid future that bends the imaginaton.

The protagonist is named Chuck who works as a 'writer' for the C.I.A. he programs similcra which are essentially androids/replica's or what ever term you wish. these people can run on their own programming (What Chuck has written) but this is basic, like autopilot. So the similcra are often operated by a C.I.A agent. (Surrogates with Bruce Willis is a perfect example)

This sets the basis for the story baecause very early on you discover that Chuck plans to kill his soon to be ex-wife, a psychiatrist who is milking him for every penny he has and is forcing him to take an extra writing job with a Television comedian.

His wife trots off to a distant planet long forgetten during a war, a planet that was a hospital for the mentally ill. the moon has now become split into 'factions' with maniacs, skitzo's and all manners of deranged people banding together in their groups. It's on the moon and the relationships with one another that really flurish with Dicks dark humour.

Chuck soon discovers that his wife is on the moon with a C.I.A similcra named Meagebom and realises he could use the andriod to kill Mary.
the simple plan however hits plenty of snags with some comical scenes.
Dick excells in Clans of a Alphane moon. for me it seemed to be a rollacoaster, as Chuck juggles a murder plot, The watchful C.I.A, a demanding T.V comic and a blackmailing psychic slime mould.

A brilliant, must read!
Mr. A. Jones

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I quite liked this, although it isn't one of his best, but if you are going to get it my tip is to avoid the Harper/Voyager 2008 edition as it has small typos scattered through the text. If that's the sort of thing you notice, it gets rather annoying. I'm not sure if any of the other editions have the same flaw, but they're unlikely to be worse.
Mark Pack

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This was a surprising treat as my expectations where not high. `Clans of the Alphane Moon' is a very funny, pre-religious psychosis, Dick gem.

Those familiar with Dick's back catalogue will recognise many of the characters but they do feel fresh here with the author still working out some different eccentricities. It's unpredictable and funny and well worth a read.

A note on the topic as well, Dick was institutionalised on a number of occasions for bad mental health and became something of an expert on psychological conditions. It adds an air of believability to what is a fantastically surreal high concept for the story. It also shows that with a little extra thought a writer can get beyond the 'mental patient as visionary' cliché that is so often trotted out in even the best speculative fiction.

The pace is very fast and after a clunky start (the opening chapter being a bit painful, unusual for a Dick novel) it soon hurtles incessantly towards the end.

A good place to start if you haven't read Dick before.
Mr. P. Rigby

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On a moon of the Alpha system over three light years from Earth is a mental hospital full of inmates. Following a war between Earth and Alphane the moon is abandonned and the inmates set up their own society, with each clan gathering according to their (rather sterotyped) illnesses. So the paranoids are in one clan and the depressives in another, and so on. It's all extremely improbable, of course, but rather fun in Dick's madcap way. Unfortunately, the action keeps shifting to Earth, where Chuck Rittersdorf, a CIA robot programmer, is planning to kill his wife - one of the many typically shrewish female characters that populate Dick's fiction. This espionage plot rather goes round in circles, and it's only when the action goes back to the Alphane moon, where Chuck's wife is headed to 'help' the clans, does it get interesting again. Anyone coming to Dick's weird SF for the first time might wonder what all the fuss is about, but for fans it's an entertaining romp!
Archy

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`Clans of the Alphane Moon' is about an estranged Earth colony made up entirely of the mentally deranged, caught in the heart of an intergalactic cold war. This is a great platform for Dick to weave his twisted black humour and paranoid dialogue. A society where everyone groups together under their diagnosis, under the banner of a famous sufferer - Da Vinci the Maniac, Adolf the Paranoid, Gandhi the Hebephreniac, etc - can be seen as a microcosm of a human society ruled by Freudian self-analysis and California lifestyle-obsessed self-help. A prediction of a future ruled by an increasingly neurotic, hypocritical and therapy-addicted modern man.

The usual Dickian themes are here in force - paranoia of the CIA; vast, tangled conspiracies controlling every aspect of life; scepticism of Communism but a greater fear of American cold war tactics - but it is also a good example of one of Dick's rarely commented on themes, fear and scepticism of womankind. Philip K. Dick's world is populated by two highly negative archetypes of modern woman; the shallow and fickle nymphomaniac, who act as literary eye-candy and usually betray the hero; and the manipulative, domineering and sadistic emancipated woman, usually portrayed as a businesswoman, politician or Freudian psychologist (in this case, the latter). This makes Dick something of a twentieth century August Strindberg, and as with all of Dick's observations, we at first put them down to egocentric paranoia, and only later think about them seriously.

This book isn't on the same level as Dick's more famous novels, but nonetheless, the idea of a society ruled by lunatics is an original and witty premise, and that alone makes this book worth reading.

Mr. M. A. Gordon

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