Clans of the Alphane Moon - Couverture souple

On a planet run by escapees from a mental institution, the doctors who arrive to restore order may be the craziest of all.

For years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric hospital. But when war broke out between Earth and the Alphanes, the hospital was left unguarded and the inmates set up their own society, made up of competing factions based around each mental illness. When Earth sends a delegation to take back the colony, they find enclaves of depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and other mentally ill people coming together to repel what they see as a foreign invasion. Meanwhile, back on Earth, CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are going through a bitter divorce, with Chuck losing everything. But when Chuck is assigned to clandestinely control an android accompanying Mary to the Alphane moon, he sees an opportunity to get his revenge.

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.