samskivert: The Man In The High Castle – Philip K. Dick (3)

08 May 2001

Axis wins WW2. The world is divided between Germany and Japan, in the case of the US, the east under German rule and the west under Japanese. As I’ve come to expect from a Dick novel, more questions are asked than answered. Extrapolating an entirely different history is surely no easy task, but Dick’s alternate universe is as realistic as it is freaky. Given that the book was written in 1962, I find his speculative extrapolation of technological development just as interesting as his speculation on how the German and Japanese societies would develop given free reign over the resources of the world.

©1999–2022 Michael Bayne