Posted on 01/16/2015 12:31:35 PM PST by Mad Dawgg
What if the Allies had lost World War II, the Nazis had been first to develop the atomic bomb, and the Germans and Japanese had carved up control of United States? That's the premise of the new streaming series from Amazon, The Man in the High Castle — an adaptation of the 1962 book by the same name. And the show is fantastic.
Nazi brownshirts control New York City streets, San Francisco is lorded over by Japanese police, and postwar TV game shows prominently feature Nazis in full regalia. The people of the United States seem to more or less accept their fate. Except, of course, for a band of freedom fighters not content with the way that their former enemies rule this alt-America with an iron fist.
(Excerpt) Read more at paleofuture.gizmodo.com ...
I believe I’m up to date on all Tutledove Alternate History. I think Orson Scott Card did one on this premise.
I remember a long past short story, Analog. A WWII soldier somehow ends up suspended animation. Finally wakes mid 70s. As he goes strolling about he sees herds of VW Beetles, quite a few Mercedes Benz. Walks in a house and nearly all appliances, TVs etc are Japenese. He logically assumes that the Axis powers won his war, is so depressed he kills himself rather than face foreign occupiers.
What the heck is the deal with Hollywood/media making so many PKD stories? Is it that so many of them have been hits or what? Hollywood reads more Phil K Dick above all others? I mean it’s pretty darn rare that someone who I know to be reasonably versed in sci-fi authors picks Dick as their absolute fav.
Freegards
Thanks for the tip. I just watched the pilot - it’s terrific!
I made sure to go vote for it as well.
What operating system are you using?
I use linux and there is a workaround for that error message.
My browser is Mozilla Firefox and my OS is Windows XP
I went to school with one of Dick's step-daughters, Hattie Rubeinstein, when _High Castle_ came out. We met on the schoolbus when Hattie saw the cover on my copy of the original paperback of _Little Fuzzy_ that I was reading. I had earlier borrowed a copy of _High Castle_ from one of the customers on my paper route. Hattie invited me to her house to meet her step-father, and I turned into his sounding board for story ideas. Having Dick as my adult male role-model at the ages of 12-13 did affect me.
And I was the only subscriber to _Analog_ in our area of western Marin County, California, when its review of _High Castle_ came out. Hattie called me to read it to her step-father, and Dick laughed when I finished the review's last sentence of "Buy this book!" We both knew that very likely meant Dick would win a Hugo for it, and he did.
Growing up in very rural western Marin County was great.
Maybe changing the delivery from Amazon (under preferences) from silverlight to Adobe Flash Player might help, assuming you have that option (I do under my personal account settings).
The site said I had to load "Silverlight", which I did.......but it still doesn't play
What a great story FRiend! Thanks for sharing!
“One of my favorite PKD novels. And the best part is you can watch the pilot Episode FREE on Amazon right now.”
I’ve never been a PKD fan (blasphemy, I know), and thought some of things in the show were silly - but that twist at the end was AWESOME! I did not see it coming at all.
If homosexual marriage is forced upon us by the supreme court, defeat in WWII would have turned out to be a good thing
How cool is that? Thanks for sharing your reminiscence of PK Dick. My favorite author.
And Episode 1 of the teleplay turned out be excellent IMO.
Good questions and observations.
Dick has provided the stories and plots and premises for so many Hollywood movies of late.
I think that Dick transcends science fiction, that’s one reason he is not a favorite of Science Fiction fans.
Wow, Thud. That’s quite an experience you had. Did you read Confessions of a Crap Artist?
And, on another note, did you ever go to the Pinky’s Pizza in Marin?
I don’t know. I will say that his stories are fairly unique. He isn’t a bad writer at all, sci-fi speculative fiction stuff or not. But there are a lot of ‘sci-fi’ writers that have that too? Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, RA Lafferty are all every bit as out there as him as far as stretching beyond the popular conception of sci-fi. All each in their own way of course. But I like every one of those guys better than him.
Freegards
I am impressed with the series. The photography was excellent. The acting was well done (Though it's hard to get a read on the characters with such a small amount of screen time for each.)
I hope they continue with the project!
I’m watching it now. When I first pulled it up the bar indicator on the player window constantly shows a low-speed connection so it had to buffer and wait consistently.
I did some searching about slow Amazon Prime and happened on this trick. In the URL window the original link comes up with a whole bunch of stuff after the movie name and code number. The poster said to replace all that goop after the movie code with “?diag=true” something like this
http://www.amazon.com/Man-High-Castle/dp/B00RSGFRY8/?diag=true.
I did this and it (the bars) shot up to full bars and the HD icon lit blue. Works great.
Alright I watched it last night. Very good. Makes me want to reread the book soonest.
Thanks, that's what I had to do.......Unfortunately, now the player doesn't run smooth...
Part of it is that so many have been hits and Hollywood loves going to the well of previous hits. Part of it is that Blade Runner was so influential to the industry, while regular people didn’t like it the kind of person that went on to write stories and make movies LOVED it, and through it PKD. Part of it is that his kids have realized that selling the rights to his stories not only earns them money, it keeps their dad’s stuff in print (really his stuff is much easier to find now than when he was alive) which preserves his legacy and earns them money, so they say yes a lot.
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