miercuri, 21 decembrie 2022

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, one of the most celebrated writers of Science Fiction, author of the excellent Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/blade-runner-1-aka-do-androids-dream-of.html the original material for the much more famous Blade Runner - 9 out of 10

 

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, one of the most celebrated writers of Science Fiction, author of the excellent Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/blade-runner-1-aka-do-androids-dream-of.html the original material for the much more famous Blade Runner

9 out of 10

 

 

This reader is not a fan of Science Fiction, although with the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read containing over one hundred titles, he is getting to the point where he will have read about thirty, in the next sixty two years or so, and Philip Dick is one of the story tellers that does entice and seduce the audiences, with gems like the aforementioned Androids and Sheep, with Ubik producing and equally lasting  good impression https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/ubik-by-philip-k-dick-10-out-10.html

 

The Man In The High Castle therefore should be no surprise, when it captivates and delights, however different the theme would be, for we have here an alternative present, wherein Britain, America and their allies have lost World War II, and now humanity is controlled by Germany and Japan.

However, all is not well between the latter and once the new Fuhrer is dead, all hell could break loose, with plots (some spoiler alert might be necessary here) to use a pretext to launch a nuclear attack, which would wipe out the imperial family and multitudes along with them, presumably making Germany the sole ruler of the planet, imposing its vicious rules on humankind, exterminating adversaries

 

We could think of the present and the lucky break we have had, with the Americans, British and Soviets winning the war, instead of the Nazis and the Japanese, and realize that it was a close call, there could have been events, decisions that had they happened or taken place, we would live in the world described in the novel.

As it is, we worry about what the future holds, with the prospect of China dominating the planet, with Russia as a weaker sidekick, and we already have plenty of material to look at – take the scolding given by tyrant Xi to democrat Justin Trudeau, the latter has had to explain that Canada is a democracy and thus he needs to tell the press and electorate what he is up to, including in dealings with China.

 

We have to consider what the war in Ukraine is going to do to the world, it has already crushed the long peace in Europe, the prices of energy have soured, and so did those for food, most importantly though is the fact that hundreds of thousands have perished in this calamity caused by one man (however much prompted, supported by acolytes, oligarchs and other vermin) and for the longer term, we have to refer to luminary Yuval Harari, author of three fabulous masterpieces, Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/sapiens-brief-history-of-humankind-by.html who has written an article in The Economist.

 

In that, brilliant Yuval Harari writes about what the conflict will do to budgets, as states will look at what Russia has been doing and increase their spending on defense (something anticipated by the thinker and confirmed by what has happened in the meantime) a move which will spark a wave, because others will follow the same trends, so that they are not left behind and vulnerable and this vicious spiral will also affect climate change measures, for there will be less and less left to spend for adaptation, funds under discussion at COP conferences (one is about to wrap up now in Egypt) for developing nations that face big threats, in the case of islands, they could be under water in the very near future…

Thus, if we do not descend into World War III and annihilation of humanity because Russia will use nuclear weapons (which it has threatened to do multiple times) or they attack a NATO country (a missile has landed in Poland, but Alhamdulillah, it was just an accident, a defense rocket from Ukraine was responsible) and then we have the most catastrophic scenario on our hands, and then we say goodbye to it all.

 

I have been mesmerized by Vaterland aka Fatherland by Robert Harris http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/12/fatherland-by-robert-harris-10-out-of-10.html and find that there are similarities between Vaterland and The Man in The High Castle, since they both present an alternative end to world War II, in which Germany wins in both novels, albeit in the latter this victory is shared with Japan, and dissatisfied with that, there is a plot to use the hydrogen bomb to eliminate the Empire of the Rising Sun…http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

Good Science Fiction book are very useful in making us think what the future will look like – positive psychology has a happiness rule on that, called Imagine The Best Possible Future, which has a few advantages, one that you get closer to what you wish, readier, better prepared, another that you are enjoying in the present, which becomes brighter, this potentially successful future, and then positive, optimistic humans live longer, have better private and professional lives, get sick less often and when it happens, they stay so for shorter periods, but what about the calamities that seem to be expecting in the wings…

 

There are advantages to being negative, indeed, there are professions tailored for that, in that they encourage negativity – such as financial analyst, the one looking for mistakes aka negativity, lawyers used to be the most depressed, with the highest rates of divorce and suicide in America, I don’t know the more recent statistics, and they were the butt of so many jokes, such as ‘a shark finds a lawyer in the water and avoids him, what do you call that…professional courtesy’ – but it is also the other way round, as in there are domains where one needs to be negative for the task to be well done, since the optimists have a better view of the ‘big picture’, but it is the negative ones that have a more accurate image of details.

Therefore, you want a  negative human to investigate crimes, to be the traffic controller for your airplane and so on…as for what we have to wait for in the future, let us hope that China (eventually with Russia, or some other rogue state as partner, or without one) will not take the place of America (flawed and debilitated as it is by the trump [without capital letter intentionally] years, and the perspective of yet another four years of mayhem and disaster) and put us all in the commie big prison…

 

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

 

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