Zounds, Dickheads! Clans of the Alphane Moon is a Dick doozy, one of the funniest, most bizarre novels you'll ever read.
Oh,
yes, in 1964, with the help of Speed, Phil sat at his typewriter in
California and pumped out, burned out, blazed out, slammed out six
classic SF novels - Martian Time-Slip, The Penultimate Truth, The Simulacra, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Unteleported Man - and the mindblower under review.
In
the opening chapter, we witness a meeting of the representatives of the
seven clans on Alpha III M2, a moon within the Alpha Centauri solar
system. Danger is at hand. Although the clans have been living
independently and peacefully for these past twenty-five years, Earth
(Terra) will be sending a team of psychiatrists for medical reasons, so
called, but everyone can see through the pretense and knows Earth wants
to reclaim control and put them all back in mental institutions. By the
way, the seven clans are those suffering from, respectively, paranoia,
mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and three different
types of schizophrenia.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Chuck
Rittersdorf, the novel's main character, a guy who makes his living
programing simulacra for the CIA, is experiencing problems of his own –
his wife Mary is filing for separation and needs Chuck to get a better
paying job so he can send her more money.
All of the above is
the barest of a barebones outline. Since there's so much vintage PKD
craziness squeezed into each and every chapter, I'll make an immediate
segue to a batch of highlights/themes:
Am I Sane? – Sticking with
the novel's language, we have all varieties of nut cases up on Alpha
III M2, but, down here on Terra, Chuck Rittersdorf must deal with his
low self-esteem and his (gulp) suicide attempts. And there's his wife,
Mary, a psychiatrist, whose occupation is marriage counseling. The
question of what constitutes sanity and acceptable behavior for
individuals in modern society was an ongoing issue for the author and an
abiding theme throughout Clans.
Privacy – Chuck working
for the CIA doesn't prevent his boss and CIA head honcho from walking
into his apartment uninvited when he's not there. Invasion of privacy,
violations of privacy, a lack of respect for privacy, anyone? PKD had a
special sensitivity for an individual's right of privacy, not to be
spied on or subjected to propaganda. Somewhat ironically, Phil has
Chuck, in Mary's words, “working for the CIA, programming propaganda
simulacra who gabbed a message for uneducated Africans and Latin
Americans and Asians”. And, of course, Chuck must deal with his living
space being bugged.
Alien Ally – Would you believe Chuck's guide,
a font of wisdom, isn't a human but a six foot Ganymedean slime mold
sporting the name Lord Running Clam? The giant slime mold speaks like a
professor (the most articulate, well-educated presence in the novel!)
and possesses one keen advantage: the gift of telepathy. Too bad we
humans lack such an ability to read other people's thoughts. Likewise,
the power to know the future like a Precog. PKD was painfully aware of
the limitations of our human, all too human condition and frequently
gives characters in his novels (both human and non-human) extraordinary
abilities – as in someone else in Clans: attractive young Joan Trieste is a Psi having the power to change a person's past.
Super-duper Speed - Clans
features a unique drug illegal on Terra, a thalamic stimulant of the
hexo-amphetamine class, a drug eliminating the need for sleep, thus
enabling Chuck to work sixteen hours a day. Chuck is given such a drug
by none other than Lord Running Clam. Do you hear echoes of PKD's own
experience writing on Speed?
The Noxious Power of the Boobtube – Phil was aware of the mind-numbing influence of American TV. Clans
also features Bunny Hentman, a stand-up comic who now has his very own
TV show. Bunny (a takeoff of Henny Youngman?) plays an instrumental part
in the war up on Alpha III M2 between Terra, the clans and the outer
space Alphanes. But, wait, perhaps Bunny allying himself with the
Alphanes against the power-hungry Terrans isn't such a bad thing, if
nothing else, the clans will be freed up from being put back in
hospitals due to their insanity – after all, as PKD well knew, the thin
line between sanity and insanity can be arbitrary, a product, in part,
of a society's exerting power to maintain its own status quo.
Alphane
Moon Mayhem – Up on Alpha III M2, pinned down by deadly lasers, Chuck
tries to sort out who is his friend and who is his enemy. The clans?
Those from Terra? The Alphanes? His attempts at logic quickly become
scrambled. “The old adage, derived from the meditations of the
sophisticated warrior-kings of ancient India, that “my enemy's enemy is
my friend” had just not worked out in this situation. And that was
that.” Poor confused Chuck – do you really want your CIA simulacrum Dan
Mageboom to kill Mary as a way to end your problems? It might be time to
seek council from the Ganymedean slime mold.
The Old Typewriter –
We're in the distant future, years away from 1964 but Phil still has
Chuck pound out his scripts on a standard typewriter and create stack of
papers. Wow! With all the stunning technological advances, one thing
PKD didn't anticipate: writing on a computer. For me and many others,
such an oversight adds an undeniable charm to his work. And as Sandra
Newman observed when writing about those SF novels finding their way to
dimestore racks in bygone years: “A crafted work of literature is a
beautiful thing; a genius's unedited ravings, however, is a thing both
beautiful and rare.”
Philip K Dick, 1928-1982
Comments
Post a Comment