A small moon used as a mental hospital is lost behind enemy lines during a galactic war; now Earth wants to reclaim it, only to find it has developed its own culture based on the different mental illnesses of those who were left behind. A counselor, a CIA agent, a TV comedian, various robots, and a telepathic slime mold all converge there, for various reasons, in Philip Dick's trippy Clans of the Alphane Moon.
I've read a lot of Philip Dick in the last few years, and you have to admire him for never running out of ideas. I thought this outing had more strange notions than most, as my brief description hardly scrapes the surface. What I like about Dick's work is how he is able to take star-spanning stories and put them in the hands of everyday people; in this case, the counselor and the secret agent, whose marriage is crumbling, the details of which weigh as heavily in the storytelling as the planet-hopping spies and aliens.
A very free-wheeling and imaginative sci-fi story with grounding in the minutiae of daily life; one of my favorites of his books to date. Recommended for fans.
I nabbed this one from www.paperbackswap.com.
Wow. That's some crazy kool-aid. Sounds neat. Love the new look of the blog, btw.
ReplyDelete