Author | Jonathan Lethem |
---|---|
Cover artist | Jacket design by Alexander Munn and Steven Cooley Jacket illustration by Alexander Munn |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction novel |
Publisher | Harcourt Brace & Co. |
Publication date | September 1995 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
Pages | 247 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
ISBN | 0-15-100091-3 (first edition, hardcover) |
OCLC | 32012520 |
813/.54 20 | |
LC Class | PS3562.E8544 A8 1995 |
Preceded by | Gun, with Occasional Music |
Followed by | The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye |
Amnesia Moon is a 1995 novel by Jonathan Lethem. Lethem adapted the novel from several unpublished short stories he had written, all about catastrophic, apocalyptic events.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 . [1] [2]
The protagonist is a survivalist named Chaos, who lives in an abandoned megaplex in Wyoming after an apparent nuclear strike. The residents of his town of Hatfork are reliant on a sinister messianic figure named Kellogg for food. Kellogg also has powerful dreams, which he transfers into the minds of others. Chaos's mind is especially receptive, making him reluctant to sleep.
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 dystopian 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 totalitarian 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 solipsistic 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 charismatic "dreamers". The reason for the break in realities, and Chaos/Moon's place in this world, is a unifying mystery.
Philip Kindred Dick, often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.
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Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.
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