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Clans of the Alphane Moon

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The SF author Barry N. Malzberg described "Clans of the Alphane Moon" as a perfectly typical Philip K. Dick work. I'm inclined to agree; for better or worse, "Clans" has almost everything we anticipate from this author.

It takes place at an abandoned mental hospital colony on a small moon. The ex-patients and their progeny have divided themselves into separate but interdependent groups according to their complaints - paranoia, hebephrenia, depression, mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, delusional and polymorphous schizophrenias. Representatives from each clan meet regularly to discuss matters of importance, including the sudden arrival of a psychiatric team from Earth. The clans, mentally ill as they seem to be, must decide how to respond to this new circumstance. PKD may have been one of the first to let the lunatics take over the asylum and then form a government.

The novel, like much of PKD's work, also deals with the sadness that sometimes comes with human relationships. Mary Rittersdorf (PKD was a whiz at character names) gets an offer to join the psychiatric team going to the asylum moon. So she divorces her husband Chuck, takes him for everything he's got, and moves away, all to fulfill her career ambitions. Chuck is furious, to the point of suicide, then homicide. Eventually, both Rittersdorfs end up on the moon. This being an astronomical body full of mental patients, and in a PKD novel at that, things don't work out quite the way either one them expects.

"Clans" includes some standard PKD aliens as well. The Rittersdorfs and the people of the moon come to the attention of, among the various non-Terrans in evidence, a sentient slime mold named Lord Running Clam (I told you PKD was a whiz at character names). This being's behavior is that of a slightly innocent Himalayan guru. His power is anything but.

PKD's books often questioned how we perceive reality, and this novel is no exception. Do we ever perceive the truth? How can we learn the truth? Is there even any advantage to doing so? Some of the novels, like "Eye in the Sky", deal with these questions directly - they suggest, for instance, that the world is really someone else's delusion. Here, the issues are more subtle, which is not surprising. After all, most of the story takes place on a planet full of people whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. Then again, if the whole planet experiences reality as fluid, are the Rittersdorfs so sure they're wrong?

And there's also the multiple interweaving plotlines, the sense of vast conspiracy victimizing the working man, the slightly clunky but generally convincing dialogue, the idea that empathy will save the world - about the only classic PKD theme missing from this novel is the use of psychoactive drugs. Then again, a lot of these characters have a problematic relationship with reality when clean and sober. And I'm not talking only about the former inmates.

All right, it's true - "Clans of the Alphane Moon" is the pure expression of PKD's mid-1960s style, or close enough so the seams don't show. What does that tell us?

For one thing, it tells us something about his attitude toward women (God knows how I missed that in all my previous reviews). The women in PKD's work can have many good qualities, but generally they don't seem truly human or humane unless they have some man to look after. In extreme cases, these women need a man to just plain control them. Mary Rittersdorf may be the worst of the bunch as the novel opens. She's a hard, mercenary, castrating harpy, who thinks she's being sane and rational. The revelation at the end regarding her mental state is no excuse. PKD was married five times and had his troubles in and out of relationships, and no wonder, if "Clans" is really typical of him,.

One of the tragedies of PKD's life was that he failed at a cherished ambition - to make a career as a writer of both mainstream and science fiction. Nevertheless, like a lot of things, this may have been a blessing in disguise, and "Clans" illustrates the point. Since PKD was not allowed to publish both mainstream and science fiction, he was forced to combine them. This led him to fashion something extremely powerful both in "Clans" and elsewhere.

Some have suggested that PKD used SF material to avoid a painful examination of the life issues he raised. As far as I'm concerned, "Clans" allows those issues room to breathe that they'd never get in mainstream fiction. Ask yourself this question - do you really want to read another novel about a couple at each other's throats in middle-class suburbia? You know all about that story already, not only from books but from down the block. Well, what about the same story on a planetwide insane asylum at war? Not only is that new and different, but with that backdrop the characters have to deal with the issues, rather than avoiding them in the swirl of daily life. Escapist literature, my foot - SF like this is in some ways the most realistic of all.

Finally, as in all but a very few of PKD's books, "Clans" concludes with a message of hope. Let's face it, in a novel where almost every character suffers from some mental malformation, anything short of total annihilation is remarkable. When, as here, the characters manage to survive, thrive, and even care for each other, it's more like a miracle, fictional though it may be.

That's sort of the main point right there. PKD spent years without intimate relationships, underappreciated, lacking in means of support, and maybe even mentally unbalanced, yet he insisted on ending his most typical work with hope. Maybe this is why so much of his work is so moving - his characters act like dizzy fools, but eventually they try to love each other. That's just what happens here. Right on.

Benshlomo says, You gotta have heart.

Years before computers could create virtual realities by dozens, Philip K. Dick, by the sole power of his words, was describing books after books virtual mental universes that were a lot more frightful than those our beloved techno-directors try vainly to shape nowadays. Among the four novels he published in 1964, MARTIAN TIME-SLIP and CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON were treating this Dickian theme by essence.

After an interstellar war that ended 15 years ago, the world has forgotten this alphane moon and its inhabitants. Alpha III was considered as a giant hospital for mentally ill people by the Earth; now maniaco-depressives, schizophrenics and obsessive have founded cities and try to leave peacefully. But Alphans and Earth want to retake possession of this forgotten moon for obscure political reasons.

If you liked EYE IN THE SKY, a novel published 7 years before by PKD, you will appreciate CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON and its numerous points of views. The same events are described and analyzed by the different characters and one is lead to understand very soon that there is no objectiveness in Reality and that the actions of so-called sane people often obey to rather perverse motivations. Anyway, if you're a Philip K. Dick fan, you already know by now that there is no such thing as Reality !

A book to discover if you are lucky enough to find it.

Clans of the Alphane Moon was written in the same year as three other books by Philip K Dick after he peaked early in his career with the Hugo award winning - The Man in the High Castle, highly original in either being a very divergent type of sci-fi or a deviating political comedy. Dick is often cited as the best science-fiction writer who does not write sci-fi, but some of his works, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner) and UBIK, come across as more descriptive in the future they present, rather than ideology and dialogue driven. Clans of the Alphane Moon tends to be a situational environmental type of Dick presentation, rather than then latter, somewhat harder, but more heady science-fiction herbs that rely on dialogue and thoughts to tell their story. It is the environments the writer conjures up that makes this one of Dick's easier books to read, comprehend and probably enjoy.

Clans of the Alphane Moon is like an early version of UBIK, developing a series of events, rather than a full story, to engage characters with other characters, in the most interesting of environments, under the most oddest circumstances. It focuses on dysfunctional relationships from the persona and how that is reiterated through the cosmos like an expanding fractal, Dick himself was married five times, here a couple, in process of getting separated, end up on a Moon run by the offspring clans of various mentally ill people who once occupied a Terra owned hospital there. Each clan has a personality character disorder that affects their role in life, down to their functions in government offices and their own disturbed nuclear family (again we have the dysfunctional relationship problem), with the looming background crisis of a CIA backed pharmaceutical company invading the Moon, to reclaim all the citizens and lands because they are all genetically insane - only to be double-crossed by Terra's entertainment industry, homicidal CIA agents turned scriptwriters, walking talking telepathic slime moulds, RBX303s and government executive love date drink spiking. It is not as funny or as heady as UBIK but certainly is a lot crazier.

Alphane Moon has all the ingredients that you can expect in a good Dick novel but maybe not as much philosophy as it could have delivered on given such a rich premise, but then again Dick is always more suggestive and overall elusive in that he never delivers on it straight in a predictable way and is the reason why second guessing the next page will never turn out the way you expect making Alphane Moon as original as any of his other works with classic characters like CIA robot simulacra and slime moulds that regenerate by sporing when they die, a galactic mini-drama with an innovative design, although crazy in parts, that is exactly what the Alphane Moon is... but then again how do the people from Terra really compare?

This is one of Dick's earlier works and maybe a little more down the avenue of choosing a follow up Dick novel to one of his more readable classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Ubik, where the reader is urged to go first, and certainly try to get in The Man in the High Castle to see how polarized this science-fiction writer is, the latter works towards the end of his career more metaphysical in nature as the writer descended into his own madness or genius (he believed an entity called VALIS was controlling him and even wrote a book about it).

I choose this after reading "The Simulacra" and will move onto the other novel he did that same year "Martian Time-Slip" next. See you there.

This book has all the hallmarks of Dick's body of work without being one of this best novels. It is certainly mining a rich vein of story-- an abandoned mental hospital on a small moon evolves its own complex society and corresponding psi abilities. After the war that resulted in the abandonment ends, Earth intends to reclaim the colony by launching a mission in the best colonial tradition-- occupation disguised as a humanitarian mission. Add into this mix a feuding couple whose efforts to destroy each other place them squarely in the middle of the action. Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) has all the ingredients for a great book, and it is without a doubt a good one.

For me, the difference between a book like this and some of Dick's more important works are how well he works out the ideas that he uses as part of the plot. Clans is occasionally a little frantic, with images and new thoughts tossed together in a kind of mental salad. Each one of the bits was fascinating, and I couldn't help but wish that he had spent a bit more time over the respective moments. And, yeah, I also wasn't in love with Dick's view on women or marriage here. I know that it's just a novel, but I can't help but think that Mary is unnecessarily evil-- was Dick going through one of his relationship breakdowns during the writing of this?

I'd certainly recommend this to Dick fans. If you don't already know the big novels in his body of work, then I would suggest that you begin somewhere else. VALIS is my unquestioned favorite, but The Man in the High Castle is also amazing.

"Clans of the Alphane Moon" was one of six books that sci-fi cult author Philip K. Dick saw published in the years 1964 and '65. Released in 1964 as a 40-cent Ace paperback (F-309, for all you collectors out there), it was his 14th sci-fi novel since 1955. This period in the mid-'60s was a time of near hyperactivity for the author. Under the influence of prescription uppers (like one of "Clan"'s central characters, Chuck Rittersdorf, who takes extraterrestrial "thalamic stimulants of the hexo-amphetamine class" in order to work two jobs), his output during that time was both prodigious and wildly imaginative. "Clans," although it may be accused of being underdeveloped and shows signs of being hastily written, IS nevertheless as fun as can be, and a really wild ride.

In the book, we are introduced to some of the residents of the second moon of Alpha Centauri's third planet: Alpha III M2. A mental hospital had existed there some 25 years before, its residents left to their own devices when Earth abandoned this world back when. Now, in the year 2055 or so, the former inmates have most certainly taken over the asylum, and the moon is ruled by the six titular clans, organized according to their members' various mental imbalances. Thus, there are the Manses (manics), the Pares (paranoiacs), the Heebs (hebephrenics), the Skitzes (schizophrenics), the Ob-Coms (obsessive-compulsives) and the Polys (polymorphous schizophrenics). Some of these residents, mainly the Heebs and Skitzes, have even developed various "psionic" powers, such as the ability to foretell the future via visions and to levitate! To this literally crazy world comes a group of disparate characters, drawn there for various reasons revolving around the Alphans' and Terrans' annexation claims. Mary Rittersdorf is a psychiatrist, there to assess and analyze the population; Chuck, her husband, a CIA (Counter Intelligence Authority) agent, is there to kill his ex-wife, with whom he had recently split; and the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman is present for political reasons of his own. And then there is Lord Running Clam, easily the most memorable and likable character in this book: a telepathic, self-locomoting, yellow slime mold from Ganymede (!) who befriends Chuck and helps him on his adventure.

As you may have inferred, there is some pretty zany sci-fi plotting involved here, with 36 named characters, and Dick mixes his stew with a good deal of zest and humor. The novel is one of the author's more accessible ones, with none of his trademarked abnegations of reality to blow the reader's mind. Still, not everything is as it seems, double agents abound, human-seeming "simulacra" are ubiquitous ("Person, shmerson," one of them tellingly says at one point) and moral truths are slippery things ("Quid est veritas...what is truth?" one of the Pares asks). And Dick's Earth of the mid-21st century almost seems as whacky as the Alphane moon (and perhaps that is the point). Nipple-dilation and extreme breast-augmentation surgeries for women are common (50-lb. breasts?!?!?!), lawyers use "potent-cameras" to take pictures of people's future deeds, and the CIA uses programmed propaganda robots to spread the good word about the U.S.A.

I must say that as much as I enjoyed "Clans" (and it IS an extremely enjoyable work), I was still left with the feeling that the book could have been so much more. As with some other Dick books that I have recently read, this one cries out to be 100 pages or so longer, or to have a sequel added on to it. Heck, I could've used another novel just featuring Lord Running Clam himself! Still, what the author HAS given us is a significant achievement, and yet another feather in his already crowded cap.

This is one of Dick's funniest novels, in spite of the fact that the plot centers on a lethal marital relationship-Chuck and Mary Rittersdorf are actually trying to kill each other. He is depressed and resigned in the midst of their breakup; she is bitchy and vindictive, planning to take him for all he is worth and more. Their showdown culminates out on the distant moon Alpha III M2, a former hospital world inhabited entirely by the clinically insane. The former patients have adapted well to having been left alone by psychiatrists, living in relative peace with each other by grouping into different "clans" according to their psychosis. Their social functions are defined by their type of abnormality. For example, the Pares (paranoids) live in Adolfville and constitute the statesman class. But there is nothing inherently crazier about their society than the one we find on Earth. It should be noted that the sanest and most empathetic character in the book is Lord Running Clam, a telepathic Ganymedean slime mold, who saves Chuck from suicide and lines him up with a more compatible woman. This is classic PKD with all his usual neuroses but also a good dose of humor and hope.

CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON has so many hysterical, sarcastic and insightful passages you'll want to memorize most of the book. It's a wild, weird, quick read that is a great introduction to Philip K. Dick for someone who wants to jump into the fanaticism headfirst. Those not quite ready for complete immersion in the reality shattering world of Philip K. Dick should look at "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" or "Time Out Of Joint" and then read "Clans", but don't skip this one. It's a real joy to read. Philip K. Dick's death is our loss!

After reading the Valis trilogy a few years back, I ...started the first couple chapters and wasn't very impressed; so I put it aside and read some other stuff. I always meant to get back to it - and now I finally did. I don't know what I was thinking!!! This book is typical PKD genius - Philosophy, theology, madness, and above all the looming question of "What is real?" - this book has it all. And delivered in a riveting, fast-paced and dizzying style. Even at it's most basic level - a story about a divorced man, down on his luck, trying to cope in a run down apartment - this novel succeeds. This book is one of Dick's best...

In spite of many an opinion that this is a post-mortem revival of an unpublished work (I also have a paperback copy from 1964), this is an excellent example of the development of PKD as a writer during this period. The characterizations are crisp and well representational of our own inner reflections of his personal struggle as an independant thinker in a disfunctional world. A brilliant satire of the modern insistence of society to pigeonhole its members, the conflicts and characters show early keys to understanding the developement of later efforts in his writings.

Phillip Dick was one the most philosophic of modern American writers. "Clans of the Alphane Moon", may be his most deeply personal revelation of what he saw as "Reality". Ultimate truth was his goal; a truth in the guise of science fiction. Undiluted Philip Dick can be a bit difficult even to veterans of his multi-dimensional perspective. "Clan" is not for the faint of heart. In my opinion it is his most misunderstood and underrated work.