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[DietRob]

I'm around half way through the book now. From what I've seen of the first 2 episodes it doesn't follow the book very much at all. That is probably a good thing because the book hasn't been terribly interesting to this point.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Ohhhh this is finally coming out, can't wait!

 

[Cornballer]

I watched the pilot last week. Entertaining premise, a solid cast, and the production values were impressive. There's a decent hook at the end, but this still doesn't strike me as something that I'll burn through quickly. Perhaps it picks up in the second episode.

In any case, thanks for the thread, Ratsky. I'm surprised that no one else volunteered for it, though we are currently in a glut of TV.

 

[Of All Trades]

Gonna watch this some time. Looks good.

I've always wanted to read a Philip K. Dick novel. Which one should I read? Feels weird, like all his novels exist mainly to get adapted into critically-acclaimed movies.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is my favorite.

 

[Wvrs]

Lot of negativity in this thread.

I can't wait for Friday, absolutely loved the first 2 episodes. It's not perfect, but the production values in terms of the world-building are fantastic

 

[Feran]

From the first two episodes, yes there is more to it.

Cool thanks. Think I'll check those eps out now

 

[A Human Becoming]

So excite. Even with the understandable criticism in this thread I still love the concept. I'll re-watch episode two again before diving into the new stuff.

 

[Leflus]

Why was Bergen the only Nordic City (Beside Danmark which is a no brainier really!) Germany invaded during the Teh World War I and II?

Uhh. Not sure if serious or not. Norway was under Nazi occupation for five years from 1940 to 1945. Our government and royal family had to flee to Great Britain to stay safe.

Sweden stayed out the war due to its neutrality policy, though.

 

[ivysaur12]

I'm pretty forgiving with alt history in terms of "well, it would've have quite happened this way", so I'm more here for the world they've built and the story itself. The pilot was pretty great, but I held out from watching episode 2 until I can do The Binge. Excited for this weekend!

 

[radios shipping overview]

Wasn't a fan of the pilot - felt like they missed the point of the book entirely and used the premise to make a pulpy, idealistic adventure show.

Godspeed to those who did, though.

 

[teruterubozu]

Saving this for my long Thanksgiving weekend flights. Gonna download the episodes via Amazon Video app "and chill."

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is my favorite.

Yup, one of my favorites as well. It's more Bladerunner than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I'm around half way through the book now. From what I've seen of the first 2 episodes it doesn't follow the book very much at all. That is probably a good thing because the book hasn't been terribly interesting to this point.

Other than the great premise, the book kind of sucks actually if you compare it to PKD's later stuff. It's the only one he got an award for, so it gets a lot of attention. But it was written early in his career and it's steeped in the old 1950s-early 60s pulp sci-fi style. It wasn't until later (after a lot of drugs, alcohol, failed marriage, 60s-70s spiritual experimentation, etc.) that PKD really found his voice as an author. That's when he went full weird.

 

[teruterubozu]

edit: oops, didn't mean to DP

 

[friday]

Yup, one of my favorites as well. It's more Bladerunner than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Oh totally, It's a great first PDK book.

I am pretty surprised that no one has made a film for Flow my Tears given the rapid pace of the book and how frequently his stuff gets film adaptations.

 

[Bandit1]

This looks really interesting, been seeing some commercials for it. Hopefully I'll get around to it next month.

 

[Cornballer]

- THR review from Tim Goodman

To maintain a serialized storyline into future seasons seems to be the goal, and so the issue of just how slowly the first-ever TV series of the book will unfold is a legitimate concern. Yet you never get the sense that Spotnitz is stalling or has no plan for extending the story beyond the scope of the book, so that’s a welcome relief. It could just be that The Man in the High Castle wants to let viewers marinate in the core issues of the series — such as what it’s like to not be free and what it takes for a people to rebound from utter defeat — and that could take some time. But even past the halfway point (Amazon made the first six episodes available to critics), The Man in the High Castle is still refreshingly intriguing and worth the investment.

 

[faridmon]

Uhh. Not sure if serious or not. Norway was under Nazi occupation for five years from 1940 to 1945. Our government and royal family had to flee to Great Britain to stay safe.

Sweden stayed out the war due to its neutrality policy, though.

True, but they only taken over Norway because of the strategic positioning Bergen had. My point was Maybe Canada wasn't needed due to strategic decisions.

 

[RatskyWatsky]

The book kind of gets into that, but in a very arcane, obtuse way that only makes the plot all too confusing. Going from the pilot, I wouldn't try to look too much into that. The show would certainly benefit if it paid no respect to that part of the book or at very least tried to handle it with more care.

Aw, that was the most intriguing part of the episode for me. :/

The really cool thing about TMitHC is the universe. Nazis won the war and harnessed the power of the atom relatively early, which allowed them to curbstomp the Allies and go batshit with their grandiose projects. Nuclear planes cross the oceans in record time (much to the admiration and chagrain of Japan, which still has to become a nuclear power and feels threatened by Germany), the Mediterranean has been drained because fuck you and the Nazis are just arriving to Mars in nuclear powered rockets. Politics also play a huge part (I thought the conspiracies inside the Nazi party were one of the highlights of the book) and it's more or less explained that both Slavic and African peoples have been largely exterminated. The book doesn't go full Wolfenstein, though, so most of the tech is still really grounded in the XX century.

That's very interesting. Thanks for all the info!

 

[Funky Papa]

Wasn't a fan of the pilot - felt like they missed the point of the book entirely and used the premise to make a pulpy, idealistic adventure show.

Godspeed to those who did, though.

And for that alone it's already better than the book~

That's very interesting. Thanks for all the info!

I think this show could turn into something else if the showrunners capture the political clashes within the Nazi party to turn it into a dystopian version of Rome.

Just like the real Nazi party, its TMitHC counterpart is rife with tension. Super mild book spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

You've got the original WW2 royalty, old farts, many of them corrupt to the bone, on their way out yet too damned enamored of power to retire; the Nazi careerists, which are somewhat moderate (you know, in the Nazi Scale of Things) and aim towards political stability, and the genocidal fuckheads hell bent on nuking Japan and probably anihilate the last Slavic reservations along with whatever trace of brown is left in South America.

The Japanese are so fucking vanilla in comparison.

This show has some pretty spectacular bones for world building.

 

[jerry113]

Thanks for making the thread Ratsky. Between this and Jessica Jones this weekend is going to be intense for me.

You'd think that Amazon would've scheduled this on a different date than Jessica Jones, though. Why split the streaming audiences' attention?

 

[Grizzlyjin]

Thanks for making the thread Ratsky. Between this and Jessica Jones this weekend is going to be intense for me.

You'd think that Amazon would've scheduled this on a different date than Jessica Jones, though. Why split the streaming audiences' attention?

Because the shows are always there. You increase the number of quality shows in your catalog and people continue to subscribe. Amazon probably doesn't care if you watch it all on the 20th or two months later, just as long as you keep your Prime membership.

And Jessica Jones is a Marvel property, more people are going to be talking about it no matter what.

 

[Silent Chief]

Book was kinda meh for me. A lot less alternate history and a lot more Philip K. Dick weird metaphysical nonsense than I would have liked. Definitely checking out the show though, looks awesome.

Same here. I never understood why that won the Hugo Award.

I like Blade Runner. I love Ubik. I'm just not that fond of this one.
Maybe I just don't understand the I Ching.

 

[Jarmel]

Just finished the pilot. Twist at the end was good even though I kinda suspected something like that.

My main issue is the motivation for the female is really weak in how she's willing to go along with this stuff.

Edit:Watching the 2nd, Juliana ruined Frank's life. Goddamn.

 

[Tertullian]

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is my favorite.

Yup, one of my favorites as well. It's more Bladerunner than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Cool, will probably check that one out.

Can I say, Philip K Dick stories have the best titles. I'm a sucker for long titles that scan well (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the best movie title ever), with bonus points if they're complete sentences . Philip K Dick is the master of titles like that.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Man in the High Castle
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

Delicious titles.

 

[xChildOfHatex]

Same day as Jessica Jones. I guess, I'll won't be sleeping much over the weekend.

 

[RS4-]

Just finished ep 2, liked it.

Someone mind refreshing me about what was on the film and the significance (if any) of the drawing?

edit - nm, saw a yt clip of the newsreel.

 

[Cornballer]

- Variety review from Mo Ryan:

This version of “The Man in the High Castle” is not so much a character study as a meditation on how powerful and corrosive forces work their way through society, from the top of the food chain to the factory workers and secretaries who have to find ways to live within a system that leaves them few avenues of real dissent, let alone rebellion. Every secret told is dangerous, every one kept is like acid eating away at a relationship or an ideal. There is not much hope in this serious, ambitious drama, but there are moments of real connection that make one believe that individuals — and even images — can make a difference.

Is that belief an illusion? Author Dick built a career out of the question, and this adaptation of one of his most famous tales explores that in an intelligent and visually exhilarating way.

 

[RatskyWatsky]

Slate - The Man in the High Castle: It’s the second best show Amazon has ever made.

The Man in the High Castle is at its best when a familiar, early ’60s America peeks through the Nazi trappings. In those instances, the show implicitly, unsettlingly asks if most people wouldn’t learn to accommodate even such a hideous new world order.

In eerie moments like this, the world seems broken—and Amazon seems like it just might know exactly what it’s doing.

 

[jerry1594]

Don't know how I'll feel about this. Will give the pilot a watch. The book was great but a bit of a letdown, Dick was an amazing ideas person but not that great at writing them down. And maybe toward the end not that great of an ideas person but I still found some super interesting. Still enjoyed a lot of his work.

 

[TanookiTom]

I thought the pilot was a bit tacky/cheap... Found it a bit unbelievable that besides some scientific advances nothing in the aesthetic really has changed since the 40ies.
And the "benevolent Japanese Empire" vs. "evil Nazi Reich" was also a bit cheap imo. But I'm sure this will be a hit for the setting alone.

 

[manipulate]

The people want an Ubik or Now Wait For Last Year show!

High Castle was a book with a lot of flaws; squarely in the middle of PKD's work IMO. (And the bottom end of PKD's work is really, really bad.)

 

[VistraNorrez]

I thought the pilot was a bit tacky/cheap... Found it a bit unbelievable that besides some scientific advances nothing in the aesthetic really has changed since the 40ies.
And the "benevolent Japanese Empire" vs. "evil Nazi Reich" was also a bit cheap imo. But I'm sure this will be a hit for the setting alone.

The Japanese did not come off benevolent at all in either of the first 2 episodes. More reserved I guess, but only in comparison to the Nazis.

 

[Funky Papa]

The only reason the Japanese came as more restrained is because most of them walked in civilian clothes, unlike the Germans, which were all full on Nazi.

Well, that and the fact that BOOK TALK

Spoiler

they allowed some black people to keep breathing in their conquered area.

It's also worth noting that the book was released in 1962, a time in which Japanese atrocities weren't as widely known as they are today.

 

[Sevket-Erhat]

Only thing I can think about is Wolfenstein the New Order

 

[Meadows]

The production values in the pilots were awful. You can see a boom mic in one of the early shots.

Hopefully it improves as the concept is good.

However at the moment it pales in comparison to its Amazon Prime counterpart Mr Robot.

 

[Cornballer]

- Alyssa Rosenberg: The unsettling alternate history of ‘The Man In The High Castle’

 

[dork]

Got this in my queue, really want to start this over the weekend

 

[Moff]

I will finish watching this even if it's just for the interesting setting

not really sure I like this whole

Spoiler

the forged movies are the reality

idea

 

[Cornballer]

- NPR review:

The Man in the High Castle accomplishes so much, where most new broadcast TV dramas these days don't even try. As a parable about war, it's as potent as The Day After or Testament, two TV productions from the '80s that imagined nuclear bombs falling on American cities. Its use of music is clever and memorable. And finally, as a TV series with a captivating production design, The Man in the High Castle is as breathtakingly original as Twin Peaks and Pushing Daisies. You have to see it to believe it. And even then, like the characters who watch the filmstrips in The Man in the High Castle, you may not believe it. But that's the point.

 

[Cornballer]

- Sepinwall's review

Still, the world itself is fascinating and fully-realized enough to compensate for the people who live there. A show set in the actual 1962 featuring these characters would probably be a drag, but drop a few Nazi flags in places where they have no business being, and things become much more interesting, even if they're not the least bit right.

- NY Times review

The result is bracing but shaky. The series is trying to explore difficult themes — the psychology of defeat, free will vs. fate, the tensions between conquering cultures — but its thin characters and pulp story twists raise doubt as to whether its sophistication matches its ambition. That said, I finished six episodes eager to see the last four. “High Castle” is at least addictive as a mystery.

 

[friday]

Yeah, I am gonna need to watch this one.

 

[tim.mbp]

Did Nazi Germany have swastikas on everything?

 

[xxracerxx]

Do we know how different the first episode is to the pilot?

 

[TripOpt55]

I really liked the pilot, but thought the book was meh. I kind of hope the show takes things in a more interesting direction than the book did.

 

[RedAssedApe]

does this get better? pilot bored me to death

 

[Funky Papa]

Did Nazi Germany have swastikas on everything?

Totalitarian regimes have a thing for symbols.

 

[adamsappel]

Is this the beginning of another resurgence in adapting every single Philip K Dick story people can find though?

I sure hope so!

It's not a realistic alt history by any stretch. In the book, it's revealed that Roosevelt got shot before coming to power, great depression makes America weaker than historical and Nazis defeat the USSR+UK through Phillip K Dick's poor understanding of the war (e.g. they would have won if only hitler did this other thing) then conquer ZE WORLD.

It bothered me but that was not even close to the biggest problem the book had.

I've never understood criticism like this. An author killing Roosevelt early is okay, but not adhering to how WWII actually unfolded isn't? Read Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, where Adolf Hitler is a failed science-fiction writer.

The really cool thing about TMitHC is the universe. Nazis won the war and harnessed the power of the atom relatively early, which allowed them to curbstomp the Allies and go batshit with their grandiose projects. Nuclear planes cross the oceans in record time (much to the admiration and chagrain of Japan, which still has to become a nuclear power and feels threatened by Germany), the Mediterranean has been drained because fuck you and the Nazis are just arriving to Mars in nuclear powered rockets. Politics also play a huge part (I thought the conspiracies inside the Nazi party were one of the highlights of the book) and it's more or less explained that both Slavic and African peoples have been largely exterminated. The book doesn't go full Wolfenstein, though, so most of the tech is still really grounded in the XX century.

Why are alt-histories that have the Nazis winning always portrayed as being much more technologically advanced?

I've always wanted to read a Philip K. Dick novel. Which one should I read? Feels weird, like all his novels exist mainly to get adapted into critically-acclaimed movies.

PKD is my favorite author (and I like MIHC, though I haven't read it in years and didn't hope for it to be something it wasn't). UBIK, Martian Time-Slip, A Scanner Darkly, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are all great.

Same here. I never understood why that won the Hugo Award.

I like Blade Runner. I love Ubik. I'm just not that fond of this one.
Maybe I just don't understand the I Ching.

I think it's deserving, but I wonder what the competition was like that year.

Can I say, Philip K Dick stories have the best titles. I'm a sucker for long titles that scan well (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the best movie title ever), with bonus points if they're complete sentences . Philip K Dick is the master of titles like that.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Man in the High Castle
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

Delicious titles.

Sci-fi in the 1970s had the best titles of all time. Of all time! I keep a list.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison
Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
On Wings of Song by Thomas Disch
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
They Shall Have Stars by James Blish
Soldier, Ask Not by Gordon Dickson
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick
Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear
A Canticle for Leibowitz by William M. Miller, Jr.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 

[Cornballer]

- Matt Zoller Seitz's review for NY Mag

I’ll say that I can’t deny it’s engrossing, and that, like Boardwalk Empire, even though I have a lot of problems with it and was disappointed by it a lot of the time, there was never a moment when I wasn’t gripped by the performances, the costumes, the production design, the photography, and the music.

 

[antonz]

Good weekend for stuff to watch between this and Jessica Jones.

 

[Pixels]

Fell asleep during 1st and 2nd episode.

 

[Funky Papa]

Why are alt-histories that have the Nazis winning always portrayed as being much more technologically advanced?

Germany has been at the forefront of engineering for a very long time.

They were the first to come up with a credible semiauto pistol, the first modern assault rifle, the first jet fighter, one of the first battle-proven night scopes, one of the earliest military helicopters and so on. It also helps that they were fielding some of the craziest shit seen to date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_323
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_322
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster

Of course, they were also behind the Allies in plenty of stuff and most of Hitler's superweapons were either plain garbage or childish fantasies, but coupled with their sense of aesthetics and a penchant for human experimentation, it's no wonder that Nazis have a rep for being the original high-tech villains. Their weapons development strategy followed the old practice of throwing all kinds of stuff against the wall and see what stuck, so when Nazis tried, they were REALLY out there.