Recall, if you will, the late 1970s, a time when Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California. In an effort to cut taxes, ends be damned, Reagan systematically began closing the state's mental hospitals, thus expelling the patients - the mentally ill and handicapped, the trouble and the dangerous - onto the streets of California's cities.
Now, imagine if these sick people - some psychotic, some simply on a never ending trip to La-La Land - moved to some distant island, and began to live with one another in a sort of clan-driven, makeshift society governed by a congress of men and woman with broken psyches. If this is an idea that sounds interesting to you, you may want to turn to Philip K. Dick's novel, Clans of the Alphane Moon.
Written in 1964, it perfectly extrapolates upon an idea similar to the fictitious scenario presented above, and then, in accordance with Dick's style, it piles on the absurd, the tragic, and the humorous, and ends with an explosion of twisted ideas, wild action, and a subtle examination of humanity's mental facilities. Mental health issues have always been an important subject in the realm of science fiction, and to Dick these notions were the benefactors of an attention almost undivided.
Dick spent a large portion of his career examining, dissecting, and pouring over characters and situations governed by questionable and deteriorating mental health. His stories often question the authenticity of human emotion, of human thought, and of human behavior, usually amidst a backdrop of some wild and delusional cosmic happening.
With Clans of the Alphane Moon, Dick eschews allegory and metaphor, and approaches the subject literally. His psychotic and troubled characters are not disguised or hidden behind a clever and mysterious veil; Dick presents everything out in the open. Five major psychosis are represented within these pages. The Heebs suffer from hebephrenia, the Pares suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, the Deps from clinical depression, the Manses are manics, and the Skitzes suffer from good old fashioned schizophrenia.
Each of these groups lives in an specific commune, and they rarely have interaction with one another. However, each group has a chosen emissary, who, when a crises presents itself, convene together in a semi-orderly fashion to solve the mutual problem. This itself poses an interesting question about their so-called “mental disorders;” if they can live together in a semi-functioning society, are they really so disturbed?
In typical Phildickian fashion, the above description only covers the small tip of a very large ice berg. As dickheads will attest, good old Phil loved to pile on the ideas, plots, sub-plots, and characters, sometimes to the detriment of his narratives. While the hodgepodge of stuff doesn't necessarily hinder this particular story, it does feel as if Dick was coasting just a bit.
There are simply a ton of ideas presented in Clans, more ideas than some authors would attempt to tackle in as many books, but none of them feel fully explored. The “main” story arc follows the failing marriage of Chuck and Marry Rittersdorf. Chuck is a CIA operative who programs and writes scripts for government simulacra. He is also encouraged, by a sentient slime mold named Lord Running Clam and a girl who can reverse time for up to five minutes, to become a screenwriter for Bunny Hentman, an uber-famous television personality. Marry Rittersdorf is a marriage counselor and psychiatrist who is sent to the Alphane moon to gather information for a possible military coup.
So we've got issues dealing with divorce, the media, androids, aliens, and covert military operations, all set against a backdrop teeming with questionable realities and extreme mental health issues; all in less than 250 pages! I didn't even mention the crazy sci-fi, laser-and-tank-infused action, or the theological twist Dick throws in as well. Phew, it's no wonder that a few of these ideas and characters are less than fully fleshed out.
While it delivers on its premise more than Solar Lottery or Maze of Death, things don't quite come together as good as they do in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Martian Time Slip. It's a shame, too, because this really is a fun read, and it would have been simply amazing had Dick spent a little more time with the characters and the central concepts. The writing is solid, the ideas are fascinating, the narrative is peppered with humor and action, and it is incredibly entertaining. Clans of the Alphane Moon is a solid B-level Philip K. Dick book, and, like I've said before, B-level Dick is better than the best from a lot of other genre authors.
