Product Code Database
Amnesia Moon is a 1995 novel by Jonathan Lethem. Lethem adapted the novel from several unpublished short stories he had written, all about catastrophic, apocalypticism events. When Tor Books published the second edition in 1996, they commissioned Michael Koelsch to illustrate a new cover art; Koelsch had previously illustrated Lethem's previous book cover art Gun, with Occasional Music.
Both Lethem and Chaos abandon this premise early on, and Chaos also goes by the name of "Everett Moon", depending on where he is. The novel plays with several other and post-apocalyptic setups. One area is covered in a thick green fog, save for an exclusive private school. Vacaville, California, has converted to a luck-based social system, taken to totalitarianism extremes.
Amnesia Moon bears homage to Philip K. Dick. During a party scene, one guest describes a battle of wills in West Marin, and another cites a West Marin inhabitant named "Hoppington", both references to Dick's Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. Vacaville is reminiscent of Dick's Solar Lottery, where society is also based on chance. When Moon and Melinda reach San Francisco, hallucinogenic drugs play a role in altered perceptions that provide access to other characters in this world, as in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Elsewhere, it is argued that the depicted realities splintered away from each other to provide resistance to a hive-like alien invasion of Earth. Such solipsism worlds are reminiscent of Dick's early novel Eye in the Sky.
The one constant throughout is the idea that reality is shaped by powerful and "dreamers". The reason for the break in realities, and Chaos/Moon's place in this world, is a unifying mystery.
|
|
