The Men In The High Castles.

Breaking months of radio silence here!

I mentioned in a previous post I had read The Man In The High Castle this year and was blown away by it. I’m always borderline overwhelmed by the amount of books I want to read. Sometimes it gets pretty hard for me to just straight up choose a book. I finally bit the bullet and read The Man In The High Castle because Amazon had released a pilot for it. The pilot was AWESOME, and it encouraged me to get off my buns and check this book out before the whole season aired. Well, mission accomplished on that front. The show launched Friday and I had that book finished months ago. The show consisted of 10 1 hour episodes.

…and I watched them all between Friday and Saturday.

Some might call binging on a show for 10 hours crazy, a waste of time, really bad for my health. I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I would like to say one thing in my defense. THAT SHOW WAS FANTASTIC. It’s very, very different from the PKD novel (but when watching adaptations of PKD you’ve got to expect that sort of thing) but it’s different without being an offense to the source material. Let me try to elaborate on this.

PKD’s novel The Man In The High Castle takes place in an America that lost WW2. Germany and Japan share control of the country – east coast Germany, west coast Japan. The world building is subtle. PKD never really hits you over the head with the differences in the culture. It’s all just there in the text and understood as being the normal way of things, because in this world it is. However, like most PKD novels there’s something about the reality of it all that just doesn’t seem right. One of the main plot points is the circulation of a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which is written by The Man In The High Castle. It tells the story of an America that beats the Axis in WW2. The novel, obviously, is considered dangerous propaganda literature and sought out to be destroyed. There’s more to the book than that though. There’s something about it, something that seems unexplainable, which brings a sort of hope into the lives of the people that read it. It feels more real than a book should be and a question starts popping up: How did this man come up with this story and make it feel like so much more than fiction? It goes on and on and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone. Needless to say if you’re familiar with PKD’s work than you can be comfortable expecting some of the same stuff he likes to go into. Mass hallucinations, reality being a construct of the mind, governments being untrustworthy scum.

The show is different. While the characters in the book are just regular people living in this occupied country, the characters in the show are much more active players. Spies, resistance fighters, enemies of the state. The stakes feel much higher here, and I understand the necessity in making that sort of change. People sitting around with the I-Ching for chapters on end wouldn’t make for very interesting television. The changes that have been made—specifically with the character of Joe Blake who is only the briefest shadow of Joe Cinnadella from the book—left me on the edge of my seat. The show is tense in way the book wasn’t. It’s much more an action show, dealing with the way that fascism has changed our country and the fact that people just go with the flow of the government no matter what their moral reservations are. Of all the things that are different though the subtly of the world remains. That subtly is really what gives the show its power. It’s all about the little things: the swastika on the telephone, the unease on the idea of hospitals, the celebration of VA Day. The smallness of the differences in our world and this one and the way the characters have accepted their fates is so unnerving that it’s wonderful.

There’s talks of a second season, and the way it ends clearly leaves it open for more adventures. But I’m happy with this has a standalone one shot sort of deal. Yes, there are questions that are unanswered and yes, there is a pervading sense of hopelessness by the last episode. They only very briefly touch upon what might be going on with The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (a film in the show rather than a book) and the notion of reality vs realities, and that is something I’d like to see resolved… But if it never comes to be, well, I wouldn’t consider this weekend a waste. 

Just check out this opening: