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A review by bibliomaniac2021
Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The first thing to say on re-reading it several decades later is that structurally it's very weak: the plot is nuts, almost as crazy as the inhabitants of the moon which doubles as a mental asylum for evolved ethnic mental types. That idea is the kernel of the novel, but the author doesn't really take time to explore the intellectual ramifications of the idea of organising a society by psychological categories. Instead we're treated to a lot of pulp detective/ space opera at both ends of the book which make the whole thing sag. This is understandable as like the main character in the book, Dick was writing fuelled by amphetamines which probably contributed to the byzantine forking paths of this frustrating novel.
In short, it's trash partly redeemed by the coruscating description of the society and the race's place in the hierarchy right in the middle of the book. Indeed, Dick was most prescient as his analysis of the Alphane social-psychic structure is very relevant to our own. The paranoid class are the statesmen hating everything and everybody outside their cherished sphere. With the populist uprising one can see elements of the manic warrior class demanding self-determination and independence from the mechanisms of power which keep the elite in control. Think the alt-right today. The Heebs - hebephrenics- can be identified with the underclasses of both the third world and the western world with their deterioration both socially and mentally through advertising and consumerism. They are the proletariat breeding without discrimination. I'm not sure about the radical "polymorphous schizophrenic strata", the ideas people unless you equate them with the new technological whizz kids, but they seem to have some thing of the hebephrenic about them as they adore the plastic and synthetic, the billionaire who sleeps on a rough mattress in his mansion. At the risk of simplification, the ob-coms might reflect the solid, puritanical narrowly ambitious clerks and administrators, though with the decline of the middle class they're likely to join the Heebs. Today, the bureaucratization of universities, the intellectuals has turned the Dick's idea class into ob-coms. As for the schizos, the poet class or mystics, they're more or less absent as there is nothing approaching a visionary in this society, just celebrities and con men.
It's interesting to compare Dick's analysis with a seminal essay by Richard Hofstadter published a year after JFK's murder in 1963. "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" gives a good historical diagnosis of how this clinical type operates, but unlike Dick, H names the paranoid as a military leader, not a statesman. However I think Dick was right to see the samurai type as manic, less disposed to negotiate or mediate via political processes. Obviously western society has changed drastically since the 1960s, but what hasn't changed is that the "pares" and "manses" are writing the narrative of contemporary history.
"Clans" can be seen as a testing kit for determining your psychological type, though I'm sure this was not Dick's intention; the book is savage satire on the psychiatry profession. For myself I would choose to live in Hamlet Hamlet with the creative radicals, though I definitely have traces of the hebephrenic with my occasional neglect of my appearance and my lack of perturbation at the sometimes unkempt state of my apt. But then I might think myself polymorphous schizophrenic- the starting point for children in the novel- but might discover that I'm normal after all.
There's an "Afterword" by another SF writer (Barry Malzberg) who calls Dick's novels "Potemkin villages" but whilst that might be possibly true of some of his plots, devices, highly interchangeable, transient, his ideas do not have pre-planned obsolescence built into them which is why Hollywood are picking up on them and recycling them as part of their propaganda offensive.
In short, it's trash partly redeemed by the coruscating description of the society and the race's place in the hierarchy right in the middle of the book. Indeed, Dick was most prescient as his analysis of the Alphane social-psychic structure is very relevant to our own. The paranoid class are the statesmen hating everything and everybody outside their cherished sphere. With the populist uprising one can see elements of the manic warrior class demanding self-determination and independence from the mechanisms of power which keep the elite in control. Think the alt-right today. The Heebs - hebephrenics- can be identified with the underclasses of both the third world and the western world with their deterioration both socially and mentally through advertising and consumerism. They are the proletariat breeding without discrimination. I'm not sure about the radical "polymorphous schizophrenic strata", the ideas people unless you equate them with the new technological whizz kids, but they seem to have some thing of the hebephrenic about them as they adore the plastic and synthetic, the billionaire who sleeps on a rough mattress in his mansion. At the risk of simplification, the ob-coms might reflect the solid, puritanical narrowly ambitious clerks and administrators, though with the decline of the middle class they're likely to join the Heebs. Today, the bureaucratization of universities, the intellectuals has turned the Dick's idea class into ob-coms. As for the schizos, the poet class or mystics, they're more or less absent as there is nothing approaching a visionary in this society, just celebrities and con men.
It's interesting to compare Dick's analysis with a seminal essay by Richard Hofstadter published a year after JFK's murder in 1963. "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" gives a good historical diagnosis of how this clinical type operates, but unlike Dick, H names the paranoid as a military leader, not a statesman. However I think Dick was right to see the samurai type as manic, less disposed to negotiate or mediate via political processes. Obviously western society has changed drastically since the 1960s, but what hasn't changed is that the "pares" and "manses" are writing the narrative of contemporary history.
"Clans" can be seen as a testing kit for determining your psychological type, though I'm sure this was not Dick's intention; the book is savage satire on the psychiatry profession. For myself I would choose to live in Hamlet Hamlet with the creative radicals, though I definitely have traces of the hebephrenic with my occasional neglect of my appearance and my lack of perturbation at the sometimes unkempt state of my apt. But then I might think myself polymorphous schizophrenic- the starting point for children in the novel- but might discover that I'm normal after all.
There's an "Afterword" by another SF writer (Barry Malzberg) who calls Dick's novels "Potemkin villages" but whilst that might be possibly true of some of his plots, devices, highly interchangeable, transient, his ideas do not have pre-planned obsolescence built into them which is why Hollywood are picking up on them and recycling them as part of their propaganda offensive.