Philip K. Dick, �Clans of the Alphane Moon�
The other thing I noticed when I was looking at my shelves for the last review was that if an author writes something I like, I end up buying everything else they�ve ever written.
Just to give you an idea, here�s what my �to read� shelves look like.
- Six books by Charles Bukowski (and another waiting for me to purchase at work).
- Five by Neil Gaiman (plus one waiting at the store).
- Five by Warren Ellis.
- Four by Philip K. Dick.
- Four by Jim Thompson (and four waiting).
- Three that are Daredevil related (two more at work).
- Three by Steinbeck and Noam Chomsky (and three more titles by both authors waiting).
- Three by Kerouac. (But no more after that, praise God!)
- Three by Alan Moore (and one more at work, so thank Christ I just finished two others by him!)
- Two each by Hemingway, Monty Python, Bob Woodward and Frank Miller.
You get the idea. For your sanity and mine, I�ve attempted to let a fair amount of time pass before I review an author that I�ve talked about in the last two months. But it�s getting harder to do, hence the doubling and tripling of titles by some authors in the graphic novel collections in recent reviews. Part of this is because I don�t want to summarize a story line over and over again, but I�m also concerned of running out of things to say.
For instance, on the Rushkoff review from a few days back, I was POSITIVE I had written about the MTV guy before, and spent two hours trying different keywords to search through the archives. As it turned out, I hadn�t written about him, but I still didn�t like writing the review because it FELT like something I had talked about before.
Which brings us to this book. I�ve already mentioned in previous reviews that Philip K Dick was a loony toony, and I�ve stated that for the most part, science fiction isn�t my bag. And with Clans of the Alphane Moon, the first thing I want to say is that Philip K. Dick is loony toony, and science fiction just really isn�t my bag.
It�s not that he�s recycling material as some authors do; in fact, this isn�t anything like any other book I�ve read by him. But it�s simply not that good. Worse is that it�s disjointed with a story that involves two worlds, three governments, six species, and a passing reference to connect them all together. Right about the time that I�m starting to get into the story, he switches gears, planets, and comprehension and I have to start all over again. This happened four times.
Four times! A book shouldn�t be this hard.
And so the end result is that I don�t care if I�m repeating myself. Philip K. Dick is loony toony. And science fiction ain�t my bag. And I still have four more books of this nonsense to finish.