Amazon: The Man in the High Castle

I would say "set your DVR," but this is Amazon we are talking about. On Friday (November 20th) you can watch the complete first season of Amazon's new series The Man in the High Castle. And it should be impressive if the pilot is any guide.

Here is a summary of the plot from Philip K. Dick's book via Amazon:

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake. 

The pilot was fascinating in many ways, but in part because you were seeing the 1960s through a new lens. For while Dick wrote a present-day book in 1962, seen today it comes across as much more interesting because we are looking back at a well understood era with a horrible twist. Maybe it's easier to understand the devastating nature of what is being proposed when you know what was lost. The future is unwritten and so change is anticipated and unknown loss cannot be mourned.

I have viewed the pilot a few times and may need to do so again to ensure I am up to speed on the events and characters. But it is easy homework because the show is so watchable. I cannot say this about all past attempts to bring Dick's stories to the screen. Maybe Amazon got it right. Give the story time to unfold and carry us away.