I’ve never read Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novel but I’ve always heard good things about it. The Man In The High Castle seems eerily prescient given that the best case scenario for the next President is for him to be the American Silvio Berlusconi. As to the worst case, I don’t want to go there right now.
I discovered the photo montage below via 8 Clicks From Nowhere. Thanks y’all. Hmm, I wonder if that makes me the Nowhere Man John Lennon went on about. Probably not. I definitely have a point of view. End of bullshit barrage, on with the montage:
Dr. A and I have been binge watching the Amazon series. I highly recommend it. I’ll even grade it: B+, 3 1/2 stars, and an Ebertian thumbs up.
Before the release of season-one, Amazon pulled a promotional stunt that blew up in their corporate face. It made the public go “Heil, no.” Here’s the pictorial evidence.
The novel is really incomparably superior, and highly recommended. (I’ve read it twice, and could easily read it again.)
Thanks on both the post and the comment…watched both seasons, and thought it was good. I think Vox.com called it the worst show on television — that’s way-over-the-top harsh (I dunno: maybe they’re trying to be like Slate, but for a younger audience: deliberately contrarian). I’ll look around for a copy of the book…which I hope better explains the alternate realities or parallel universes…
That VOX article was trying to argue that the show sold out on what the author believed was the most timely and provocative aspect of Season One (that America would accept Fascism in stride) in favor of a ‘blithe’ premise that some Fascists are worse than others. I am not sure what other choice the show could have taken even had Spotnitz remained (whose high profile exit is clearly the source of most of VOX’s irritation with the show). The author also seems convinced that the show is punting on a chance to critique Trump’s Amerika, but that seems like an undo burden given that Season Two was in the can before the election ended. I get what the author was trying for and the since the site as a whole has adopted a strongly pro-Spotnitz point of view the article is predictably partisan, but the critique itself is a little over the top given how far the show was from the source material in the book already while Spotnitz was still running the show.
All this is to say, it is best to approach the novel as you would the Bourne series; the source material is an inspiration not a source for an adaptation. Worth reading, but a product of its time and with only one foot in the original.
That’s why it’s called an adaptation. Sometimes coming to these things without having read the orignal is best. The book is usually better than the teevee/movie adaptation.
As for eerily prescient, you might want to try “Radio Free Albemuth”…
“In this alternate history, the corrupt United States president Ferris F. Fremont (FFF for 666, ‘F’ being the 6th letter in the alphabet) becomes Chief Executive in the late 1960s following Lyndon Johnson’s administration. The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered on a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as “Aramchek”. In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called “Friends of the American People” (FAPers).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth