I’ll open this review by saying that I liked Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. While not a one-to-one retelling of the landmark 1963 Philip K. Dick novel it’s based on, it’s a very faithful but loose adaption. I’ll explain this in a minute. The show’s producers, Ridley Scott and Frank Spotnitz have succeeded in painstakingly creating a realistic and by turns, terrifying world where the Axis won the Second World War. It’s a monumental work.

While the original novel was more of a meditative piece, television demands some kind of conflict, and so, the Resistance – never mentioned in the book – is given prominence in the series. Another point of difference between the novel and the series – I’m not knocking the series mind you – is that The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the book within Dick’s book, which showed that the Axis had really lost the war, has become a series of newsreels that, in the spirit of Dick’s book – still show a world, but not necessarily ours – where the Allies won the war. Perhaps because television is a visual medium, this can be both again expected and forgiven. But interestingly, as of the end of the first season, we have not met the titular man in the high castle and the author of Grasshopper, Hawthorne Abendsen. Or have we?
Like the best of the alt-hist genre, The Man in the High Castle holds a fun-house mirror up to our own imperfect world. After finishing my binge watching of the series, I found myself wondering if indeed we did live in that best of all possible worlds. Maybe we do. We should count ourselves lucky.
As of this writing, a second season of ten episodes of The Man in the High Castle is in production, and is due to premiere on Amazon Prime December 16th, 2016. If anything, we can expect the second season to cast a wider net in exploring its alternate universe and introduce some new characters. Hopefully, sometime during the next few months, I’ll be able to review it for you.
What’s Next?
I’m halfway through reading Harry Turtledove’s first book in paperback of his The Hot War series, Bombs Away – I hope to have a review for you soon. I can report, that so far, I’m enjoying it. I’ll also have forthcoming reviews on Peter Tieryas’s United States of Japan and Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Utopia.
Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store. Thanks.
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