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Have any of you read this book? I am half way through (reading other books also at the same time).
I never heard of the author or this book until I spotted it on some website. However, I am not a big sci/fi fan. It's not easy reading for some reason (not technical, I just only seem to get through a few pages before I have to do something else) and I want to soak in the details.
My husband (likes Sci/Fi) says of course this guy is famous only after Asimov in the genre. (again, not my forte or interest normally). But it reads like alternate history so I like it.
Curiously, I am so well read and 'what I consider quite knowledgeable' about books but surprised I never heard of this before or the author.
I don't want to know the end so no spoilers, please.
I selected it for my book group a few years ago. I had to tell the people who don't like science fiction that they would probably have to venture into the science fiction of the library or book store to get it, but that it is not science fiction.
I thought it was well done, but I didn't really buy the central premise. For the story to work we have to accept that in a very short time after the United States loses WWII (I think the events in the book take place about twenty years after the end of the war) the majority of the population of the United States would have pretty much completely acquiesced to foreign control by Germany and Japan. I just don't think that's at all plausible. To take just two examples, I and millions of others do not accept that Bush legitimately won the election in 2000, and that's almost ten years ago; similarly, there are plenty of people, some of whom post on these boards, who don't accept the legitimacy of the victory of the United States in the Civil War. Looking at these examples, it doesn't seem likely that the American populace would so easily accept defeat by the Nazis and Japanese.
I highly anticipated reading The Man In The High Castle, as it is widely considered a classic work of alternate-history literature. In the end, I only found it mildly interesting. The story itself did not grip me. And while I could accept history proceeding somewhat differently, and resulting in the United States losing the Second World War, such a loss would have been the sort of loss the Japanese had in mind when they attacked Pearl Harbor - knocking the U.S. out of the war. The occupation of the North American mainland was completely implausible. Japan and Germany simply did not have the capability to launch cross-ocean invasions, especially against a nation far too remote to soften up with sustained strategic bombing campaigns. A point-of-divergence in 1933 (Zangara's assassination of President-elect Roosevelt, and resulting isolationist Presidencies) is far too late to account for such relative capabilities and power disparities.
That said, what I did enjoy was the clever premise in an alternative history setting, in which an author within that setting writes a history alternate to that alternate reality - which parallels what actually happened in our real timeline.
That, I found very interesting.
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