Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Classic PKD, but not spell binding, January 13, 2007
Though this does have the PKD signature on it, the plot is not exciting. One of his classic characteristics is that you almost have to be mentally ill to fully understand his concepts. This is no exception. As most PKD fans know, PKD suffered from mental illness himself, and he used it as fuel to write.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SF NOVELS OPUS TWELVE, June 12, 2001
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Broken Hearts and Broken Minds, October 22, 2008
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.
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