Book Report

I just burned through a decent book: The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick. I promised myself I’d do more fiction this year and High Castle came recommended by an internet source I tend to trust. The premise of the book is what hooked me. It’s the early ‘60’s, and Germany and Japan won the Second World War. The Japanese occupy the west coast of the USA, renaming it the Pacific States of America. The Germans rolled through Europe, routed the Russians, and occupy the east coast of the U.S. After winning the Germans bottle up the Mediterranean and turn it into farm land, invent rocket travel to Mars and Venus, and take the Final Solution on the road to Africa.

Just in case you had any inkling to read it I haven’t given away any plot spoilers. The book is about the lives of a few separate people that are loosely connected. The aforementioned alternative history is dribbled out here and there. If the author sounds familiar it’s because he’s written stuff you’ve seen. Bladerunner (originally a book entitled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (originally a short story called We Can Remember It For You Wholesale) and Minority Report (they didn’t screw with that title) were all written by Mr. Dick. High Castle is really more a work of alternative history than Science Fiction. A nice thing about the book; it gives a subtle reminder of what was really at stake in the Second World War. Not the land or the conquest but the ideologies. Much like a beer on payday, the book goes down smooth and easy.

Ares