My book of this month! OK, trying to pick something that maybe people have heard of or even read themselves, unlike last month’s book! Maybe, still a little out there?
American Sci-fi writer most well-know for Hollywood ripping him with Blade Runner film. This one an alt-reality novel and not really sci-fi, first published in 1962 which is almost the halfway point of America’s losing Vietnam War. In this novel Nazi Germany and Japan did win World War II and it’s how would the world be different but off course focusing on the Untied States of American more, I found a little map online somewhere just below with how it’s cut up after failing in that war in this fiction.
I’ve wanted to read this novel for a long time but haven’t until now. I don’t know but I think the current world polys were to sum it all in just one line: the rich 1% is running the world and pretending they’re doing for everyone else. I’m an Aussie and I don’t know if the rest of world knows or even cares the Australian Prime Minster is a spineless, brown nose, two face ex-lawyer, Do you know he even he defended Kerry Packer? He just smiles at all the cameras, says nothing when opening his mouth but everyone seems to take all his BS. But pretty much matches up with the rest of the world leaders. How as democracy turn out like this? It’s totally failed or it’s a system so easily corrupted by these rich old white men for their own means.
So I’ve really got totally side track just in the above paragraph but I don’t know how to write about a book with out giving it all away. I’ll say this now, the punchline right at the end of this novel is so hilarious because it sounds just about right and so perfect!
Written all from the POV of a few run of the mill citizens and not the big wigs running the show but someone does figures it all out! The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which is the novel inside this novel is so very clever and written by the character The Man In The High Castle who just a novelist, author of Grasshopper book who just lives in the suburbs in the neutral zone. I’m saying too much, I think? How do you write a blog posts about books? Sorry, this is shit write-up but please don’t call it a review for this great book!
Anyway it’s five out of five, ten out of ten novel! I was going to do a book per month on my blog but I’m pretty useless at this, hey? But I will try do another one next month! So have you read The Man In The High Castle? Feel like saying something a bit more usefully than me now? Please!
Cheers 🙂
a1000mistakes 
It’s a deeply moral book, isn’t it, and the use of the I Ching articulates both the Japanese or Oriental perspective and the perception that this might be a false reality in a society where random artifacts have ridiculous value. The open ending, when the author turns out to be very different from Juliana’s expectations, reinforces this idea. Everything matters – or nothing does.
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Yes, thank you Elaine that’s right and you say it much better than I ever could! 🙂
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Hardly! I would love to read the novel within the novel although we’re living it I suppose! What is interesting is that PKD was apparently considering a sequel but Nazism was a mindset he just couldn’t bear to inhabit. I love counterfactual stuff – Len Deighton’s SS-GB is fantastic, as is CJ Sansom’s Dominion, both considering life under Nazi victory in the UK. Incidentally, PKD loved what he saw of BLADE RUNNER in production and it’s a real shame he didn’t live to see it released.
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Yeah, yeah i guess we could be the living and breathing The Grasshopper Lies Heavy! Maybe i should check out those SS-GB and Dominion books? Yes, i guess it’s a pity he never did see the Blade Runner movie!
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