A funny post-apocalyptic road noir tale of Chaos, who lives in an abandoned projection booth at the Multiplex in Hatfork, Wyoming, and his journey...
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Jul 03, 2011
Faye
rated it: 
Jonathan Lethem did it to me again! I am not a great fan of science fiction but I enjoyed "Amnesia Moon" just as I enjoyed "Motherless Brooklyn" and yet do not read many murder mysteries. Here is one gem from the book, "Vance being real doesn't mean the aliens are, said Fault. It's just another dream, Everett. What better way to keep people under your thumb? Make up some big enemy, justify everything as part of the war effort." This is a story about a lost, si
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Oct 11, 2011
Caitlin
rated it:
Chaos is holed up in the projection booth in an abandoned theater in Hatfork, Wyoming. He’s become a bit of a de facto public enemy in the aftermath of whatever happened—nuclear fallout, plague, civil war, who knows—but his position is all Kellogg’s fault. Kellogg runs the supply trucks but he also runs the dreams. When every citizen, be they human or slightly unhuman, closes their eyes, they all dream the same dream, in which Kellogg is often a mythical hero and Chaos an archetypal villain. Tho
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Dec 07, 2009
Monica
rated it:
Because I’m obsessed with rhythm, I’ve started reading Jonathan Lethem’s books in order, from first to latest...as I do with pretty much all authors from whom I start reading more than one book. “Amnesia Moon” is the second Lethem book and I liked it as much as the first.
This book can only be called science fiction noir. It takes place in a futuristic world. A world where you’re never quite sure if Chaos is living in a reality or a dream world...where the lines of Chaos and Everett More...
This book can only be called science fiction noir. It takes place in a futuristic world. A world where you’re never quite sure if Chaos is living in a reality or a dream world...where the lines of Chaos and Everett More...
Jan 12, 2011
Patrick
rated it: 
Each chapter we learn more about Chaos' world yet each chapter we know less. Amnesia Moon is a trippy dystopian novel that follows around Chaos, a movie theater dwelling survivor, in his trek to find what is wrong with the world, and what is wrong with his memories. Lethem effectively throws us into a weird place with memories that can't quite be counted on and situations that take a few paragraphs to start making sense. The characters are all well defined (when appropriate) and I was always in
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Nov 21, 2010
Daveski
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Aug 14, 2011
Rachel
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Jan 02, 2011
Krishnakumar
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Finished reading the (supposedly) post-apocalyptic Amnesia Moon which I really liked. Lethem's world-building is similar to these other New Weird writers, Jeff van der Meer and Michael Swanwick. The idea of hinting at a world that is bigger than the protagonists who walk through it, or rather of how any world presented in fiction is a fragmented world (best done in Viriconium, if I remember right). While Lethem has some sci-fi elements to his narrative, most of it is the spiralling journey of se
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Apr 12, 2010
Don
rated it:
As the cover says, futurist road trip noir written in obvious homage to Lethem's hero, Philip K Dick. An American world completely transformed by a disaster which could be, but somehow isn't quite, a nuclear holocaust. Chaos, the hero, breaks out of his refuge in the mutant town of Hatfork to find out what has happened, and discovers in his travels that reality now has the quality of dreams dreamt by mysterious, dominant dreamers. Finding out here they are is the moody, discontended task of a
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Aug 25, 2011
Jon
rated it:
Gosh Lethem. I love so many things about you, but every now and then you stumble and it's hard to watch.
This is the fourth Lethem novel that I've read. It is not as good as Gun, With Occasional Music, though it's certainly not as meandering as You Don't Love Me Yet. This one is very clearly his love letter to Philip K. Dick, an author I enjoy, so I'm fine with that.
Having recently read PKD's Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - with all of its dreams-within-dreams and resulti More...
This is the fourth Lethem novel that I've read. It is not as good as Gun, With Occasional Music, though it's certainly not as meandering as You Don't Love Me Yet. This one is very clearly his love letter to Philip K. Dick, an author I enjoy, so I'm fine with that.
Having recently read PKD's Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - with all of its dreams-within-dreams and resulti More...
Nov 09, 2011
dani-elle
rated it:
more like a 3.5 rating, in between 'liked it' and 'really liked it'
nice read with fantastical-dream elements good for if you're waiting for a flight or in the line at the DMV
reading this, you're very much just along for the ride. i found it absorbing and entertaining, but will concede it doesn't provide a lot of closure. This didn't bother me so much as it wasn't a massive work, but I would almost feel better if it were a less-answers bare-bones story work rather than a p More...
nice read with fantastical-dream elements good for if you're waiting for a flight or in the line at the DMV
reading this, you're very much just along for the ride. i found it absorbing and entertaining, but will concede it doesn't provide a lot of closure. This didn't bother me so much as it wasn't a massive work, but I would almost feel better if it were a less-answers bare-bones story work rather than a p More...
Jul 03, 2009
Ori
rated it: 
In a line: not as inventive as it thinks it is, but definitively strange.
Or: Cloud-Atlas lite.
Or: Nightmare Invisible Cities.
Certainly the general concept of Amnesia Moon is solid; I'm all for multi-hued-dynamic-post-apocalyptic-landscapes, but at many points the novel begins to feel just a little too smugly pleased with its own surrealism. While reading I was driven by a great sense of unease. Not unease like "The Road," where I was perpetually worried for the More...
Or: Cloud-Atlas lite.
Or: Nightmare Invisible Cities.
Certainly the general concept of Amnesia Moon is solid; I'm all for multi-hued-dynamic-post-apocalyptic-landscapes, but at many points the novel begins to feel just a little too smugly pleased with its own surrealism. While reading I was driven by a great sense of unease. Not unease like "The Road," where I was perpetually worried for the More...
Jan 11, 2009
Features Little America, Wisconsin. I still have a card I picked up at a hotel there (2002); featuring a penguin pointing to phone numbers for road conditions, highway patrol, the sheriff in Green River, the hospital and the Little America fax machine. One fax town. Yes. I-80 Exit 68. See ya, there mutants!
Nov 24, 2008
Dwhren
rated it: 
I did not like this book at all. Usually if I don't like a book I can say that even though I don't like it someone who likes X type of book might. I just didn't get this book at all. I can't tell you what it's about because even after reading it I still have no idea. It made absolutely zero sense to me. I could tell from the first page that I wasn't going to like it because it is somewhat post-apocolyptic, and I never like those kinds of books. However this was even worse than that because
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Aug 03, 2009
Lesley
rated it:
It is always difficult to read an early book by a writer without being influenced by the quality of the later works. That said, this is an early work in many ways, yet well worth reading.
The dream-like plot reminded me of Steve Erickson's novels, as well as the laisse-faire approach to plot. Now, I have never minded Erickson's handling of plot because the logic of his narratives seems more archetypal. In Amnesia Moon, the plot seems to reach a moment where resolution is possible, and then More...
The dream-like plot reminded me of Steve Erickson's novels, as well as the laisse-faire approach to plot. Now, I have never minded Erickson's handling of plot because the logic of his narratives seems more archetypal. In Amnesia Moon, the plot seems to reach a moment where resolution is possible, and then More...
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Sep 04, 2011
Sam
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Chaos, also known as Moon, lives in a post-apocalyptic America, or perhaps some other reality. Reality, however, is shaped by dreamers, and Chaos is a latent dreamer. He sets out on a quest to find a better way to live seeking not only truth but also, as it turns out, community and family.
One way to read the book is as an analogy about postmodern society. In this view, reality is created by us, that is by social consensus. This certainly includes dysfunctional aspects. In the book More...
One way to read the book is as an analogy about postmodern society. In this view, reality is created by us, that is by social consensus. This certainly includes dysfunctional aspects. In the book More...
May 09, 2010
Megan
rated it:
Generally I never would have picked up this title because science fiction is not my cup of tea, but it was a book club selection so I grabbed a copy and dove right in. I was surprised to find myself quickly engrossed in the "post-apocalyptic travelogue." I genuinely enjoyed the beginning of the book, but found the end to be a major disappointment. It almost seems like Lethem just ran out of stem. He created a world filled with dreams, mind control, fur covered girls, and robot evangeli
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Aug 06, 2011
Onnena
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Dec 29, 2011
Brian
rated it: 
"Amnesia Moon" is excellent sf in the tradition of Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick. In keeping with that style, Lethem's surrealism is much more overtly on display than in his later works. Combining elements of post-apocalyptic fantasies and near-future science fiction with questions of dreams, reality and existence, "Amnesia Moon" is difficult to pin-down. It traverses close to where the reader may expect but never falls perfectly in line. It asks questions, but only h
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May 20, 2011
Jamie
rated it:
*sigh* I just typed a review, but then accidentally deleted it. I don't have enough to say about this book to make it worth retyping, so I'll just sum up:
I didn't "get" this book. The first half seemed potentially interesting, but the second half seemed to wallow around in a muddled plot involving dreams. Because I only read one chapter a night for a few days, I lost track of what was dream and what was real. Alas, I didn't care about the characters or the original plot enoug More...
I didn't "get" this book. The first half seemed potentially interesting, but the second half seemed to wallow around in a muddled plot involving dreams. Because I only read one chapter a night for a few days, I lost track of what was dream and what was real. Alas, I didn't care about the characters or the original plot enoug More...
Sep 02, 2010
Brian
rated it:
I'm increasingly fond of Lethem. I've read him totally out of chronological order, but found this, his second novel, I believe, almost my favorite (I still like his latest, Chronic City, with its slight turn away from hyper-fantasy). The ending disappointed me a bit, but it reminded me of Christopher Nolan's latest movie, Inception. Actually, the whole novel did, in many ways: the sharing of dreams, levels of reality, dreams within dreams (they even inject a solution to share certain dream r
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Nov 24, 2009
Ben
rated it:
Amnesia Moon proves once again that Lethem has great difficulty finishing a book. In this case, however, it's unclear whether the ambiguity is a curse or a blessing.
Though Amnesia Moon's strange and psychedelic dreamscapes never recieve a good explanation, it's almost better than if they had. Truly great science fiction is so tied to the reality of science that it's refreshing to read a novel in which the fiction plays a more important role, but the book doesn't suffer from the same More...
Though Amnesia Moon's strange and psychedelic dreamscapes never recieve a good explanation, it's almost better than if they had. Truly great science fiction is so tied to the reality of science that it's refreshing to read a novel in which the fiction plays a more important role, but the book doesn't suffer from the same More...
Jun 16, 2009
William Thomas
rated it:
i wish i could give this book more than 3 stars. but i just can't. it seemed like a book that fit into the specific framework of modern story-telling, the formula, the writing, the outline. it was just so... tidy. and i hated it that way. i figured if he ran with it, just took the idea of existentialism and subjective reality and ran with it, pulled the characters with him, it would have worked. however, it wasn't a complete waste of time, it was enjoyable and a great imaginitive story from a gr
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Jul 27, 2011
Stacy
rated it:
The book was hard to get into, because it seems to start in the middle of a story and is very confusing. But, once I got into it, it was really interesting (although, to be quite honest, I still don't understand what it's about) because you are constantly trying to figure out what happened to the main character and what happened to the world in general. The stories are interesting, the characters are interesting, but I found I was left wanting much more. I actually felt Lethem ended the book in
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Sep 23, 2011
Patricia
rated it:
Amnesia Moon takes you on a wild careening ride through dreamscapes - exploring the mutable nature of reality. At the center of this collection alternate worlds the character Chaos is the connecting thread - reacting to and creating our shared reality. This is my favorite Jonathan Lethem book despite the fact that I didn't care for the ending. After the beautiful expansive worlds unfold and draw you in - the ending seems constrained and self conscious - but don't let that stop you from enjoying
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Oct 10, 2009
David
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Apr 26, 2009
Zerbe
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Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon was the third of three books I picked up at an amazing little used bookstore that I stumbled upon in Hamilton, New Zealand. It is also the second book I've read and reviewed from the genre-bending, middle-aged Brooklynite--my first being his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn, which I enjoyed profusely. Amnesia Moon dials back the timeline another four years from Motherless Brooklyn, to Lethem's second novel, a dystopian cy
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Jul 24, 2008
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Jan 24, 2010
Logan
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Throughout the years Jonathan Lethem has made no secret of the high regard that he holds for Philip K. Dick. The MacArthur grant winner has edited and written the introduction for the Library of America anthologies of Dick's work and written several great articles about the mad prophet of science fiction's final descent into paranoia and madness. For all of this though, it wasn't until I picked up one of Lethem's first published novels, Amnesia Moon, that I was able to see just how much the ha
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Jun 16, 2008
Matthew
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Jul 03, 2011
Steev
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Lethem is consistently great, I've decided. This is his second novel, and it's interesting that both this and his first one, "Gun with Occasional Music" are very similar in spirit to Philip K. Dick's work - the kind of stories that make you wonder what reality is even after you've put the book down for a while.
This book is about a guy in a post-apocalyptic situation, but he discovers as he starts travelling around that different localities have different versions of what the More...
This book is about a guy in a post-apocalyptic situation, but he discovers as he starts travelling around that different localities have different versions of what the More...
