The man in the high castle [TV serie] SPOILER IN TAGS

[John Doe]

So amazon has decided to go into TV production, and after watching the first episode, I'll make space in my schedule from now on.

episode 1 for free on youtube:



For those like myself who haven't read the book and need an introduction to the alternative world.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Halie Satanus]

Pretty excellent.

[John Doe]

I expect good stuff from this, Amazon needs a hit if it wants to compete with Netflix, it must have spent enough $ to make itself noticed.

[Halie Satanus]

The production values, sets, costumes ect look high. The music fits nicely too. The casting is pretty good. Lots of potential for a hit.

[John Doe]

Link On February 18, 2015 Amazon.com announced that The Main in the High Castle was greenlit along with four other series and a full season will be produced

As it turns out, Amazon releases lots of pilots, wait for critical response and only then decides what is worth sending into production. So this thread will go into hibernation for a while.

On the plus side, Ridley Scott is the executive producer...

[Halie Satanus]

On the plus side, Ridley Scott is the executive producer...

A'yup. Did you catch the guy making the origami unicorn in the diner?

Little nod to Scott...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Condottiere 40K]

Nice film filter, though the backdrop may be a touch too stark, but perhaps that had to do with the tone of the original work rather than on squeezing the production budget.

[Halie Satanus]

Series green lit...

http://deadline.com/2015/02/amazon-o...eo-1201375797/

[MathiasOfAthens]

Amazon is a great company. I really respect them. I hope they develop more books into TV series. I'd love to see "Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield on the Tele.

[John Doe]

The first 10 episodes will be released on November 20th 2015. Get ready for binge watch!!

[Halie Satanus]

Finally, I've seen the first two episodes, wonder why they held it back..

[RubiconDecision]

Good aspects
Alexa Davalos, a lovely talented actress, commits to her art to authentically portray Japanese traditional martial arts. She even shows Kampo, traditional respected herbal medicine. She was extraordinary in Resistence w/ Daniel Craig

The book is challenging.

Great set design that will likely win an Emmy.

Bad aspects
Asians as mostly one dimensional archetypes. Why? It's a dated book(1962) which will create fodder for the Nanking crowd.

Ultimately without reading the book, the big reveal will disappoint the average viewer.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ma...he_High_Castle

Don't read this if you like surprises.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://www.nineroses.com/pkd/tmithcnf.html

[conon394]

Not seen it but poor choice for AH - dumb book. As soon as the US ran the Manhattan project the war was over by 1946 - period. To get to Axis victory you more changes that I can count on all my fingers and toes and my kids as well - all three.

Also please talk away the Vinson-Walsh Act (wide congressional backing not driven by the president) which essentially made the US invulnerable two either the IJN or the pathetic plan Z of Hitler (which at best was going to come to completion in a or two after WW2 ended). Not mention the IJN had only hardly had the capacity to attack at Midway - and it lost because it lacked the ability to repair is key ships with some rapidity or replace pilots. How does the UK fall? Invade Hawaii and Australia patently silly unless you go back another 20 or 30 years a change the nature of Japan beyond belief or even the suspension of belief.

Its quite possibly the worst WW2 alternative history I've ever read and is only still in print because so many people drool on about Dick

[HannibalExMachina]

all you are saying is that it is an unlikely outcome.....how does that make the story dumb?

[conon394]

all you are saying is that it is an unlikely outcome.....how does that make the story dumb?

Yes! More or less - a story predicated on an alternative history that is very close impossible w/o significant back work is dumb. Thus I find the philosophical pretension of the author silly since he could not even mange to construct a decent history to make it in.

[krste]

You're a funny person Conon.

[conon394]

@Krste - Not sure joke or sarcasm. Simply put am I no fan PKD and thus I'm not likely to produce a kind review. But OK muse about the human condition in world where the Axis won I really would like a concrete basis for that victory (that was vastly never going to occur) correct the endless missteps of the Axis first and tell me about made up failures for the good guys. What Germany do any better to defeat the USSR? How does an attack on Perl Harbor not provoke a US under any President? What magic wand gives either Germany or Japan to get to the USA. How the UK fall? One thing people like to forget that while the US population and congress was 'Isolationist' toward Germany and and another war in Europe it was broadly in favor of an aggressive policy about Japan's actions and ambitions in China. FDR dead or alive, the US was willing to go to war for that. Thus it a lot of talking too get to a point where the US does not like everyone else bail out of the inter - war arms agreements but have the slack capacity to to it better than everyone else.

[RubiconDecision]

Conon is quite correct in there's no way in Hell the Japanese could have won.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

However, the story is the Nazis win, and since they're allied with Germany, tag along on the coattails of the Nazi's advanced technology. That means carving up the USA, but inevitably being gobbled up by the Nazis.

Phillip K. Dick was a visionary with mediocre writing skills. He was befriended by Robert Heinlein, who loaned him money since PKD had serious schizophrenia which hampered his clarity and writing. He went through periods of deep delusion probably from under medicating on purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip...#Personal_life

On February 20, 1974, while recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth, Dick received a home delivery of Darvon from a young woman. When he opened the door, he was struck by the beauty of the dark-haired girl and was especially drawn to her golden necklace. He asked her about its curious fish-shaped design. "This is a sign used by the early Christians," she said, and then left. Dick called the symbol the "vesicle pisces". This name seems to have been based on his conflation of two related symbols, the Christian ichthys symbol (two intersecting arcs delineating a fish in profile) which the woman was wearing, and the vesica piscis.^[23]

Dick recounted that as the sun glinted off the gold pendant, the reflection caused the generation of a "pink beam" of light that mesmerized him. He came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance, and also believed it to be intelligent. On one occasion, Dick was startled by a separate recurrence of the pink beam. It imparted the information to him that his infant son was ill. The Dicks rushed the child to the hospital, where his suspicion was confirmed by professional diagnosis.^[24]

After the woman's departure, Dick began experiencing strange hallucinations. Although initially attributing them to side effects from medication, he considered this explanation implausible after weeks of continued hallucinations. "I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane," Dick told Charles Platt.^[25]

Throughout February and March 1974, Dick experienced a series of hallucinations, which he referred to as "2-3-74", shorthand for February–March 1974. Aside from the "pink beam", Dick described the initial hallucinations as geometric patterns, and, occasionally, brief pictures of Jesus and ancient Rome. As the hallucinations increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live two parallel lives, one as himself, "Philip K. Dick", and one as "Thomas", a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century AD. He referred to the "transcendentally rational mind" as "Zebra", "God" and "VALIS". Dick wrote about the experiences, first in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth and then in VALIS, The Divine Invasion and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight (the VALIS trilogy).

At one point Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah. He believed that an episode in his novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said was a detailed retelling of a biblical story from the Book of Acts, which he had never read.^[26] Dick documented and discussed his experiences and faith in a private journal, later published as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.

His stories are remembered due to successful treatments which provided windfalls to Hollywood.

Note Blade Runner is a favorite film, but had the original story been filmed on its on merit, it wouldn't have been cinema, just another forgotten sci-fi film.

[John Doe]

@Krste - Not sure joke or sarcasm. Simply put am I no fan PKD and thus I'm not likely to produce a kind review. But OK muse about the human condition in world where the Axis won I really would like a concrete basis for that victory (that was vastly never going to occur) correct the endless missteps of the Axis first and tell me about made up failures for the good guys. What Germany do any better to defeat the USSR? How does an attack on Perl Harbor not provoke a US under any President? What magic wand gives either Germany or Japan to get to the USA. How the UK fall? One thing people like to forget that while the US population and congress was 'Isolationist' toward Germany and and another war in Europe it was broadly in favor of an aggressive policy about Japan's actions and ambitions in China. FDR dead or alive, the US was willing to go to war for that. Thus it a lot of talking too get to a point where the US does not like everyone else bail out of the inter - war arms agreements but have the slack capacity to to it better than everyone else.

I haven't read the book and don't want to know anything in advance, but in the first episode, there was a veteran from the war being a cop, and himself "couldn't remember what he was fighting for". It looks to me as a logical part of the story line not to know how USA loose the war since the winner would be the one writing history and brainwashing the population. Likewise, there isn't that much detail in 1984 to explain how the 3 super-states came to be, it never spoiled my reading because all those informations were fed by Big Brother anyway.

[HannibalExMachina]

thats really funny, so basically every scifi story set in the future is bogus too? because they all have to be based on some unlikely alternate history, how else would we have FTL and whatnot in a few centuries.
and what does the human condition have to do with who won the war? if the characters are shaped in a believable way by the history of their world, how exactly that history went is immaterial to the quality of the story. this is not the story of how the axis won the war, the alternate history is a backdrop.

and i have to lose a word about dick being a mediocre writer......yeah, he just won the HUGO award, no big deal.