Philip K. Dick1962
Awards: Hugo
★ ★ ★ ★ -
I am a big Philip K. Dick fan anyway but this book is a particularly good one of his.
It is an alternate history set in 1962 in which the Axis won World War II. The western states of the U.S. have become the Pacific States of America (PSA), which are run by Japan, and the east coast and Midwest states are run by Germany.
In between, the Rocky Mountain States (RMS) are a tenuous neutral zone that neither Germany nor Japan has yet moved to take over, but relations between the two powers are strained because each suspects the other of wanting to do so. (Italy has been relegated to a second-class power.)
In the RMS lives an author who has written a novel that is an alternate history in which Germany and Japan lost the war. The novel is wildly popular because it makes the former Americans think about What Might Have Been. It has been banned by Germany but is, for the time being, tolerated by Japan.
Dick’s book has several separate story lines that sometimes intertwine - American artisans in the PSA trying to introduce a new line of jewelry that does not appeal to the dominant Japanese aesthetic; spies playing on the hostility between Germany and Japan; and a woman who accidentally gets involved with an assassin bent on killing the author of the alternate history novel. My favorite character was Mr. Tagomi, a well-meaning businessman in the PSA who unknowingly coordinates a meeting between a German double-agent and a Japanese general and gets involved in foreign intrigue way over his head.
I enjoyed all the stories in this book but the best parts, for me, were the little details of life in the occupied USA. The takeover by the Axis powers affects everything in the occupied regions of America including speech patterns, religion, style, and sometimes even thought.
This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
My favorite thing about this book is that the Japanese become quite worried about it because once people start to read the book, they began to think that that's actually what happened.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great angle on the "What is the true nature of reality?" theme that runs through so many of Dick's books, including this one in multiple threads. I also love the meditation on authenticity when it comes to collectibles in that vein.