Literateur: "Clans of the Alphane Moon" by Philip K. Dick

I devour Philip K. Dick books like potato chips.

The man has gone from a fringe counter-culture writer to an established member of the literary establishment.¹

Dick wrote dozens of books in the 60's on speed and the quality was amazingly consistent for a junkie. They zig and zag with much zazz. There's always an amorphous hyperintelligent alien race, a deranged psychic, a psychedelic drug that warps reality along with minds, androids with more sentience than humans, a false messiah, moon bases firing doomsday weapons at Earth, a completely different version of world history, creaky technology destroying the fabric of society, and mentally ill characters conspiring against each other...and themselves.

His work all blends together. I love everything he wrote,² but if you ask me to tell you about the plot of "Galactic Pot-Healer" or the protagonist in "Counter-Clock World," I'll serve you up a blank stare.

"Clans of the Alphane Moon" melts nicely into his mind-bending 60's ouvre, and I can cheerfully report that I have no idea what was going on for most of it. But it was a fun ride!

A couple is getting divorced and they get enmeshed in an intergalactic CIA conspiracy against a distant planet's moon with seven different factions divided by their different mental illnesses battling against each other. There's a television stand-up comedian who's secretly a spy, a sentient Ganymedian slime mold manipulating the main character, lasers firing from all directions, and no one knowing who to trust or knowing what's real.

You know. The usual stuff.

If you like Dick, you will like this book. If you don't like Dick, you either haven't read him or you're wrong. If you haven't read him, this isn't the best place to start.³ And if you're wrong- I can't help you.

* * *

1. He has three volumes of his work- 14 books total- collected and published by the Library of America.

2. Exception: I don't like Dick's non-sf work. "Confessions of a Crap Artist" was a real chore to get through and I've skimmed a couple other "literary" works of his and they're really not much fun. With no technology or aliens or future shock or reality-shifting antics, they feel like an artist working with shackles.

3. As a starting point, try "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" or "Ubik" or "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said."

-Phony McFakename

* * *

Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.