CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON

"An abandoned satellite holds two worlds at bay"

1st.EDITION:

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:

{For the best bibliographic info in French goto: www.multimania.com/ggoullet/pkdick/frames.html Thanks for the cover pix, Gilles}

"Listen," he said futilely. "Are you my mother or just my wife? I mean, is it your job to keep goading me on? Do I have to keep rising? Is it becoming TERPLAN President, is that what you want?"

Vote for your Fave PKD Story    My family back on Ganymede said they'd kick my gelatinous ass if I didn't pick CLANS as one of my faves! There's too much to say about this novel... Some of Dick's most memorable characters are found here. Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife, er, wot's 'er name... Mary, the bitch! And Lord Running Clam, my favorite character of them all: The funkily friendly telepathic slime mold who collects things and is always present with unwanted advice. This is PKD at his empathetic and funniest best. -- Lord RC, IN

PKDS-2 10:

Publication date: Nov 12, 1964.

PKDS-1 4:

Five PKD titles have been purchased by Bluejay. THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH is scheduled to be published in Jan 1984 followed later in the year by CLANS.

PKDS-4 10:

CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON (Bluejay, tp, April 1984, 269pp, $6.95)
This is a mass-marketed trade paperback, featuring an Afterword by Barry Malzberg, a frontispiece by Matt Howarth and cover art by Barclay Shaw.

PKDS-8 5:

(JB:) I love the idea that all of that stuff is paranoia, until you see the photographs of his exploded apartment. Then it certainly becomes something besides paranoia.
(TP:) It's easy to do, as Barry Malzberg did in his really surprisingly misinformed and error-filled essay in whichever Bluejay book that was (CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON), to jump to the conclusion that Phil was nuts. I think Malzberg says that Phil was living at some focus of God's attention and couldn't leave his shabby apartment because that's where God's speakers were. (Laughter) (a). it wasn't a shabby apartment; and (b). God talked to him all over the place -- in Fullerton, several addresses in Fullerton. Everything Malzberg says is wrong! He's got wrong Phil's age at death, by I think more than one year. He's got wrong the number of days Phil was in a coma. He's got wrong -- everything! Details that a newspaper could have cleared up.
(JBR:) Or maybe that the newspaper got wrong.
(TP:) Well, it's really shockingly careless from a writer of Malzberg's stature. He was just shooting for cheap, quick, uninformed color. Which may be fine in fiction, but if you write about a guy who actually lived, it's...
(AW:) Glib?
(JBR:) And dissappointing?
(TP:) Glib, dissappointing and very unprofessional.
(AW:) I think a lot of people had that same reaction. A lot of informed people anyway. I'm surprised that it was accepted for publication. Just because it was solicited and then written doesn't mean that it had to end up between covers.
(TP:) I really expected better
(JBR:) I don't know. Maybe because its an Afterword, it is sort of quick editorialism, and should be taken in that light.
(TP:) If you simply want to dissmiss the subject and move on to something else, that's a good way to go, but if you really want to understand what propelled Phil, and what was the fuel that kept him moving, it was a whole lot more subtle than that. And more rational than that. It's the same way with saying he's paranoid: superficially that sounds correct and can cover most of the facts, but it won't really work in the long run. Too many screwy things really did happen to him, and too many of his outlandish dreads turned out to be all too well-founded. {J.B.Reynolds, Tim Powers, Serena Powers, Andy Watson, Jim Blaylock 1985}

PKDS-11 5:

In Japan... Sanrio will publish ... CLANS.

PKDS-12 10:

Cinema Update: An option has been taken on CLANS by a fellow named Gary Walkow.

PKDS-13 15:

1986 saw Japanese publication of CLANS translated by Yasuko Tomoeda.

PKDS-15 10:

Gary Walkow, who has been prowling Hollywood looking for financing for his proposed film of CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON (he has an option and has completed a screenplay), has discovered among other things that work still proceeds on "Second Variety".
Walkow, incidentally, would like to hear from PKDS members with any contact in the world of film production and financing. He's very serious about his CLANS project, and his credentials are good. his first film "The Trouble With Dick" has received good reviews and was winner of the Grand Prize at the United States Film Festival, 1987... Walkow says he's deeply committed to capturing the essence of PKD on film, and believes CLANS is a good vehicle for it. Write: Frolix productions, 2501 Beverly Ave, Ste. 2, Santa Monica, CA 90405.

Vote for your Fave PKD Story CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON. I give it to all my (many) mad friends, usually when visiting them during their first institutionalisation. Funny as all get out, and hopeful -- like "firewater", it endows the mad with wonderful powers. -- Michael Field, Manitoba

TDC :

(PKD:) In comparison to, like ACE books... I used to hold the French edition in one hand and an ACE edition in the other... CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON is the one I used...
(DSA:)(sarcastically) Yeah... Great cover for that book... The guy with the gun...
(PKD:) (also sarcastically) Yeah, right. It's a book about guns (laughter). So I said, "Holy smoke! I can see a tremendous difference in the physical qualities of the two books. And the say they're gonna publish all of my novels." Well they didn't publish all of my novels because other French publishers bid on them and outbid them for a large number of novels. So Opta just published the ones they had acquired title to. Someone told me I have like 26 to 29 novels in print in France. {PKD - A & B 1977}

TDC :

(PKD:) I love CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON, because the whole entire thing works up to this one funny scene where they call off the attack on the rocket ship and the robot hasn't been told and he goes and hammers on the door.
(DSA:) I really love that book too, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the scene near the end where the relations among all the characters get so complex that the main character has to just sit down for about 3 pages and try and untangle who is on who's side. He finally realises that its an impossible equation to solve; there is just too many people doing too many illogical things, some entirely on their own!
(PKD:) That's a funny book in many ways... {PKD - A & B 1977}

 

Vote for your Fave PKD Story!   Most Fun Novel To Read And Reread: CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON  --  Gregg Rickman, CA

Whatever the government's actual motive, she had one clear intuition about it: the motive was a good, hard, selfish one.
And, in addition, she had one more intuition.
She would probably never know what that motive was.

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