The Man in the High Castle Puns

I've always been really interested in alt-history, and this was my first time watching a TV show that explored it. I really loved the show (minus the ending) and was wondering if anyone had recommendations for similar shows? Also, is it worth reading the book for TMITHC?

Edit: thank you so much for all your recommendations, I’ll definitely look into all these shows x

I finally got around to watching the first episode last night and it was really dragging. Have you watched the show? If so, what did you like about it? Does it get better?

I love books that are fictional but based on a non-fictional timeline. Ones where we explore the 'what if' sort of thing, except avoiding modern (21st century) politics because that would just make me angry lol. Thanks for all your help!

Edit: Enough books for a good couple of months here! I'll check them all out. Thanks everyone.

I just started watching the 4th season of Man in the High Castle and a question came up that I've already asked myself during previous seasons: Why are both the Germans and the Japanese using so many Soviet vehicles?

The Waffen-SS almost exclusively uses BTR-60s and T-54s/T-55s on the ground and some tanks that appear to be early model Centurions as well as helicopters resembling the Mi-24A, although they are never shown completely (until S4E3 at least).

The Kempeitai also uses the UAZ-469 as it's mainstay patrol vehicle.

First I thought they just wanted to save on the prop budget and get some cheap, old Soviet surplus crap instead of making their own E-50, E-75, whatever props, but considering that huge amounts of the series' sets and props are CGI already, I guess that's not the reason.

From a historical point of view it doesn't really make sense. The series starts in 1962 and the war ended in 1947, although the Soviets probably surrendered a good bit earlier. So both the BTR-60 and the Mi-24 hadn't even been conceived at that point in time. And I highly doubt the T-54 would have been built in anything but miniscule numbers before the surrender.

There's no reason to believe the Soviets would have been any more technologically advanced than in our world and I don't think the Germans would employ Russian armament designers. It's also hard to think they couldn't come up with something better than a T-54 when they've already colonized space.

So is there any explanation for this or is it just random? Since they've put a lot of effort into making the world appear immersive and somewhat authentic, I can't believe the showrunners would have just overlooked this.

What would it be like now days?

Responses range from (paraphrasing):

>Why are they protecting Black literature in their own library? If anything the Bible is the most repressed work of literature!

To:

>Why all this focus on black communist movements? This show is totally ruined by SJWs!

By people who, clearly, have never heard of Black Liberation politics of the late 1960s, when, you know, this history-themed show takes place. 🙄

i'm getting a Man in The High Castle vibe from this event, very cool, came out of nowhere and surprise me, if you watch the show them you might know what i'm taking about, the thing i love the most is the possibility of a different universe, same people but different lives, in this case, the Vorlan Imperium didn't existed and what is the Vorlan Commonwealth? what kind of empire are they, its different from the vanilla one, same idea but different execution, i love it, roleplaying intensity!!!!!!!!!!!

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I just finished watching TV series 'The Man in the High Castle' and learnt few things which I think I must share with you all so please read till the end because it's important to understand the psyche of 'those people'.

Who are 'those people'? Well, basically white people but the 'liberal' version of them who dominate pop culture and define all sorts of morality which you must religiously follow because that's the zenith of morality yada yada.

Apart from regular 'White woman savior' complex, which I shall ignore...in this series was something striking which one won't notice it until 4th season.

In 4th season at the end, the conflict is going on between 'Black Communist rebellions' with the covert help of China vs Japanese Pacific States. To outside world and their public, Nazis and Japanese are allies but they still have ongoing frictions on a regular interval like targeted killings.

The protagonist, A white woman, who has been so so humble all throughout series that you can't help but root for her even though the series is so good that you actually root for Nazis as well at the same time. All the time she is against Nazis. She uses and throws people, lets them die in their situation but you can certainly say that it was an occupational hazard.

So far so good, no problems, but halfway through season 4, you notice them setting a tone I would say where the usage of the term 'State' is very obvious and direct and it also becomes pejorative. In the last episode, term 'Terrorist' is used for the protagonist by the Reighsfuhrer of American Reich indirectly making the viewer lean towards the 'terrorist' now which he had been doing for Nazis as well, all this time.

In the same episode, Black Communist Rebellions hack the signals of Reichs state TV and broadcast their anti-Nazi messages. The cause at first looks very good, if you do not think much, you will instantly support them but....it has a larger message keeping in mind the impact it has on people's subconscious mind.

On one hand, you have Nazis and on the other two groups of rebels. The usage of the generic terms is very liberal and 'State', 'Propaganda', 'Oppression' are some common ones which are used for Nazis. If you have to eventually make a choice, you would naturally go for the rebels because there is no other choice unless you want to be supportive of Nazis. But the pop culture makes extra effort to leave an impression that State is always wrong and whatever it says is always 'Propaganda' go

This is Propaganda styled Poster depicting the expression of Juliana Crain with the rays around her used to portray hope. .

The focus is on depicting the illustration as a propaganda styled banner typical of any resistance movement

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I read a lot of the stories in this sub, and I've experienced one myself. One question I come back to is: What do these glitches imply about reality? Many of them seem to suggest a multiverse, where it's possible to hop between branches of different realities. Yet it seems no major spiritual tradition talks about this, or gives any explanatory framework.

On that note, you may find the following Philip K. Dick story interesting, sourced from the biography about the famed sci-fi author by Carrere, I Am Alive and You Are Dead.

One of Dick's best books is now a major series on Amazon Prime, the Man In The High Castle. It has a very GITM theme: an alternate universe where the Japanese and the Germans won WWII, and run the USA. It has a very GITM scene too, where one of the Japanese characters briefly lands in our reality (the 'real' reality).

The character, a Japanese administrator named Tagomi, is focusing intently on a piece of jewelry, sitting on a bench in San Francisco. He looks up and sees that a major landmark in SF at the time, the Embarcadero Freeway, looks different. He then walks down the street into a bar and notices that he receives no special treatment when walking into a restaurant from non-Japanese customers. For a moment, he's landed in our world, where the US was victorious. He runs out and has a kind of panic attack, and reverts back to his reality.

At the end of the book (spoiler), one of the main characters, Juliana Frink, meets the author, Hawthorne Abendsen, who wrote an underground fictional book (in their universe) where the USA beat Germany and Japan - the so-called man in the high castle. He says something to the effect that the book actually is describing reality. Very soon after, the story ends.

The interesting part here is the connection to how Dick wrote the book. He had discovered the I Ching shortly before starting writing, and he let the I Ching dictate all the major plot points, all the important narrative choices. In a real sense, as Dick saw it, the I Ching 'channeled' the book. And if you take the message of the book at face value, it could be read as saying that alternate realities are possible: the ending seems to be saying that this is truth, these alternate realities.

To return to the episode mentioned above, when Frink meets Abendsen, she asks him about how he wrote the book, and he says he did it by using the I Ching. She then asks him to throw a hexagram (part of the I Ching's divination system). He does; the h

For context, like everyone, I obviously admire the premise of the show. And semi-unpopularly, I also really enjoyed Season 1. I did not hate Juliana's or Joe's arc like a lot of people did, and I definitely enjoyed Oppergrupenfurher Smith's, Trade Minister's, Frank's and Chief Inspector Kido's arcs.

But ever since Trade Minister started jumping through timelines, I found myself more disengaged with the series and more disinterested in that aspect of the show. I just finished S02E05 (the one where Joe's father takes him to the breeding house) and now idk if it's worth continuing the show if the universe hopping grows to become a bigger focus of the show.

Am I the only one who thought that Hitler could have been the Man in the High Castle? Especially after the scene in which he is literally in a high castle watching the films. I thought that maybe he had created this MITHC character so the resistance can actually work for him as well in order to get as many films as possible. I'm wrong anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts.

Is there a work of any sort which describes the events of the timeline from FDRs assassination up to the time of the TV series?

Throughout the Man in the High Castle series there is one thing I can confirm: its biggest draw is its characters. The MitHC series features lots of different characters whose motives make up a large part of the plot of the series’ drivers.

For character-driven stories, we can forgive some amount of plot armor and some amount of illogical reasoning so long as it fits within their character. And that is why this new season’s ending blew it all.

John Smith, for example, is a character whose very basis comes from his extremely character-driven action. His actions throughout the series come from his ability to be a flawed, yet likeable character of a man who compromised his deepest beliefs to protect his children and wife, making it easy for us to root for him. For a character who is very much motivated his motivations begin to taper off in the last season and in the end his death is not character driven but plot driven. He’s treated like an antagonistic villain in the last episode and murdered for his sins, which in a plot-driven story would be fine, but for a character whose entire basis is about how he - the person - reacts and changes and eventually acts, this is a bad idea.

Just to show you the immense potential of this character, there is a very famous character who also has to contend with the demons of his own making: Anthony Edward Stark. Tony Stark could have been murdered in Iron Man 1. Or 2. Or 3. Even The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War, but they chose to do it in Endgame - because his fully-formed character arc allows audiences to sympathise with his character and accept his choice to die. But since the show got axed so quickly it prevents Smith, whose arc clearly isn’t complete, from having a well-thought out - acceptable - death, one that we can sympathise with.

There is one group in this story that completely shoves that plot-driven idea into the ground: the Black Communist Rebellion. The members of the BCR that we follow remain characteristically motivated until the very end, even rejecting the U.S flag, completely in keeping with what we’ve come to know about the characters. But the final episode decides to give them one of the most ambiguous ‘hopeful’ endings where their motivations are ignored and instead America is ostensibly and probably reunited by people who aren’t too keen on the Stars and Stripes.

So much of the ending has the same flaw: the necessity to end it all shoves in the face of characters w

Looking back at this show I wish they just focused on the fact that the Axis Powers won WWII, and not focus at all on the films or parallel worlds. I mean the greater Nazi Reich, the neutral zone, and the Japanese pacific states is already a fascinating setting/topic with also sorts of stories you could elaborate on.

But instead of focusing on this setting, this show focuses mainly on these films and the parallel worlds that go with them. The problem is this show does a pretty horrible job explaining anything regarding how the parallel worlds work and how these films make a huge impact. Like how does Juliana and the other “travelers” go between worlds? How does the portal in the cave work? Didn’t the cave portal kill people at first going through, so what did they do to tweak it?

And I found the significance of the films to be pretty weak overall. For example in season 3 lol Juliana goes to a Jewish camp and shows the films to the people there and the majority dismiss it as just false propaganda and something that won’t help. I think the films for sure could help inspire hope but I don’t think they’d carry the weight the show makes them out to be. The fight against the Reich and the Japanese obviously requires courage and hope, but more importantly it requires resources, weapons, and actual soldiers. The films aren’t going to provide these resources, and the argument that they would make people flock to resistance is pretty thin.

This show should have focused just on the resistance, the Reich, the Japanese Pacific States, Berlin, and the Empire of Japan. Season 4 was my favorite because we got to learn about resistance movements like the BCR, we saw John Smith as a US solider, we learned details about the Japanese losing in China, and we got to see politics in Berlin. All of this is sooo much more interesting then the dumb films and parallel worlds.

They should have just focused on Axis wining WWII. I know it might be an unpopular opinion but we wouldn’t have had this underwhelming ending with everyone being able to get through the portal lol?

I'm just wondering... why was the myth of the Philadelphia experiment never properly applied to the man in the high castle? It would have provided for an excellent plot device on why this travel exists; how it came into existence.

See https://youtu.be/ChjyCR8V2Bg