Clans of the Alphane Moon

Rating:
Summary: My personal favorite of all of his books.
Review: After having read almost every single book written by Philip K. Dick, I really feel like I could write a program (maybe in a Mad Lib style) that could generate brand new stories in the style of Philip K. Dick. Think I'm kidding? Ok - Man loses his (way, mind, faith) after being reamed by a (ex-wife, current wife, harpie girlfriend) only to discover that what he thought was (reality, truth, purpose) is really only a (illusion, lie, sham). So, after having said that, I have to say that out of all of Philip K. Dick's books, Clans of the Alphane Moon remains my personal favorite of them all. Written at the beginning of the period of time when he produced most of his books, Clans of the Alphane Moon somehow manages to use some of the standard tricks used in his other novels, yet here it still seems fresh and new. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Slime Mold resurrection
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: Slime Mold resurrection
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite PK. Dick books
Review: Besides having a really great storyline/plot. that plot is full of humor and brilliant ideas. definitely an underrated SF masterpiece by Philip K. Dick

Rating:
Summary: Dangerous book
Review: Beware. If you have a slightly twisted sense of humour, reading this book could make you seriously addicted to Mr. Dick. It was the first of his I read, and I ended up befriending a second-hand book dealer just to get hold of some of his rarer books. Sad but true.
You have been warned.

Rating:
Summary: Hysterical and Unforgettable
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Lord Running Clam and the Planet Sized Mental Home
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Shark Sandwich
Review: I love PKD. But this book belongs at the bottom of the PKD pile. Don't make it your first read by PKD. Predictable, underdeveloped, ludicrous, and tedious, without the usual PKD reality or thinking challenges. Sadly, the best character is the slime mold.

Rating:
Summary: Shark Sandwich
Review: I love PKD. But this book belongs at the bottom of the PKD pile. Don't make it your first read by PKD. Predictable, underdeveloped, ludicrous, and tedious, without the usual PKD reality or thinking challenges. Sadly, the best character is the slime mold.

Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER GOOD ONE BY PKD
Review: I wouldn't consider Clans to be PKD's best, but it is pretty good. What I found most interesting about this book was the variety. You have (as is common in PKD's works)a man who is struggling with his (in this case)ex-wife. There are lots of psychological and thought-provoking passages, as well. Then there's humor, like the fact that the main character's ex-wife was a marriage counselor! And who can forget the Ganymedean slime mold? But what this book mostly concentrates on (in my opinion) are the Pares (Paranoids), Ob-Coms (Obsessive Compulsives), Skitzes (Schizophrenics), Polys (Polymorphic Schizophrenics), Heebs (Hebephrenics), Manses (Manics), and Deps (Depressed). Although it isn't a prerequisite that you know what all these are (if you don't know already), it sure does help in understanding this book.