strange and random happenstance

Celebrating All Creatures Great and Small: For the Love of the Yorkshire Dales by All Creatures Great and Small
Published by: Michael O'Mara Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The official visual celebration of All Creatures Great and Small and its incredible setting: the Yorkshire Dales.

Featuring over 200 spectacular shots from all four series, plus an in-depth look at the characters and real-life inspiration for the show, this book tells the fascinating story of the program's main character: the Yorkshire Dales.

The official All Creatures Great and Small companion offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the award-winning show, with beautiful photography throughout."

I mean, we're days away from Christmas and this is the perfect gift for those who love a cozy heartwarming tale every Sunday night... Also I'm personally hoping for lots of pictures of Samuel West in those delicious brown boots Siegfried occasionally wears...

Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino's best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a case where hidden history, and an impossible crime, are linked by nearly invisible threads in surprising ways.

The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident - Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. She's taken time off from work, clothes and effects are missing from the apartment she shared. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight - she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.

But if Sonoko didn't kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association - an eccentric artist, who was Sonoko's mother figure after her own single mother passed; and an older woman who is the owner of a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder- which, surprisingly, connect to his own traumatic past - to unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together."

And if the person you're buying a Christmas present for isn't into the cozier side of life, how about some murder? It's not the holidays without murder, in my mind...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: All Creatures Great and Small, Christmas, Invisible Helix, James Herriot, Japan, Keigo Higashino, Masterpiece Theatre, Murder, Samuel West, Siegfried Farnon, The Devotion of Suspect X, Yorkshire, Yorkshire Dales

When I was growing up there wasn't this glut of television. Miniseries were special events. Everyone, and I mean everyone, would watch them. When Roots aired over 100 million people tuned in, accounting for 85% of all homes with a television in the United States. But there was a miniseries up there with Roots, always talked about in the same reverential tones, and that was Shōgun. Airing three years after Roots in 1980. While it didn't break the records Roots did, it came in a close second and lead to other prestige adaptations, from North and South to The Thorn Birds. Starring Richard Chamberlain, also of The Thorn Birds fame, as John Blackthorne, the show was well received in the United States, but less so in Japan. There was a lack of authenticity in their eyes, despite being filmed in Japan. And this was a valid complaint. I mean only now, over forty years later, are television shows taking the time and effort to actually be historically accurate and culturally sensitive. I'm not trying to slag off the original, I'm just saying that our understanding, our desire to do better, means that shows are now more culturally aware. And I think that is what made people connect to this new adaptation so strongly. It didn't feel like a television show, it felt like a window into the past. And, I really don't know how they did it, but they became the show everyone was talking about. This new adaptation of Shōgun recaptured the fervor of the original! It was a special event that everyone was talking about and which rightfully swept the Emmy Awards with eighteen awards, setting a record for most awards won by a show in a single season. For me though, it took me awhile to get into the show. And no, it's not because over 70% of the show is subtitled, which just adds to its authenticity, it's because the character who brings us into this world, John Blackthorne, this time played by Cosmo Jarvis, was a bit of an asshole. He's too belligerent and in your face. It's the connection with the other characters, and in particular Anna Sawai as Mariko, that finally give you the in into this world. Although my Dad would totally disagree, after five minutes he would have been willing to lay down his life for Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Toranaga. In fact he had forgotten the original miniseries so I had to look up to make sure Lord Toranaga didn't die because he "couldn't have handled that." So, I guess all types of people connected to this show in all different ways. But for me what really got me loving this show is oddly something really stupid. Do you remember the Jennifer Love Hewitt show Ghost Whisperer? I mean, it wasn't that good of a show and the best thing about it was the opening credits... I mean, the logic of the show never quite worked but what always annoyed me was when Jennifer Love Hewitt's character, Melinda Gordon, was passing on the messages of the dead to their loved ones she edited what they said. She always paraphrased and pissed me off. I know it's because it was usually the guest actor of the week, I still can't believe Colin Firth's little brother Jonathan was one, and said guest actor would have a big speech and obviously you don't want to have Melinda repeat it verbatim, but it still pissed me off. This person came back from the dead to pass on this message and you can't bother to pass it on properly? Fuck you ghost whisperer. Which brings me to Mariko acting as John Blackthorne's interpreter. She is perfect. She repeats everything, she translates everything, and somehow it isn't repetitive, it just makes you satisfied at a job well done. Like a perfect line of poetry, it brings you peace.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, Emmy, Ghost Whisperer, Hiroyuki Sanada, Japan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, John Blackthorne, Lord Toranaga, Mariko, Richard Chamberlain, Roots, Shōgun, The Thorn Birds

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1962
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Allied Troops failed. The Axis powers won and divided up the spoils. Nazi Germany claimed the eastern United States while Imperial Japan created the Pacific States of America from the western coast and the Rocky Mountain States became a neutral buffer zone. It has been fifteen years since the end of the war. Fifteen years living under new laws, adapting to new cultures. Fifteen years of trying to forget the freedom Americans once had. But everyone has handled the situation in a way unique to themselves. Robert Childan has flourished under Japanese domination. His shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. deals with objects from America's past that the Japanese just love for their historicity. He has learned his trade well and understands the respect and protocol his clients demand. From Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese trade official dealing with a visiting Swedish industrialist, to the Kasouras, a young couple in love with Americana, Childan will go beyond what is necessary to please his customers. But soon his confidence in his life and his store will change forever when an item he has is accused of being a forgery.

Of course it is a forgery, there is no way that there are enough Colt .44s from the "wild west" to supply the demand for them, but Childan doesn't know he's just collateral damage from two disgruntled employees who work for his supplier, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, trying to go out on their own making jewelry instead of forgeries. One of these two men is Frank Frink, a man desperately hoping no one ever finds out he's Jewish and daydreaming that his wife, Juliana, will return to him. But Juliana is in the Rocky Mountain States where she's gotten involved with a man, Joe, who's obsessed with a book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by Hawthorne Abendsen, The Man in the High Castle. Abendsen never forgot his freedom and his book is about an Allied victory in WWII. A past and present that could have been. As powers are at play trying to once again change history and divide alliances with the Germans wanting sole control of the world, one woman will learn the truth and perhaps it will set everyone free.

Back when I was more of a film buff than book geek I was very much aware of the controversy surrounding Blade Runner and which release of the film was the true vision of Ridley Scott, similar to the issues surrounding Terry Gilliam's Brazil which lead to me buying a cheap VHS transfer for the directors cut at a Doctor Who convention. This desire for truth lead me to seek out and read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My introduction to his terse almost choppy writing style is forgotten in the fogs of time, or in this case a really long train trip to New York, but I still remember my film TA's awe that I bothered to go to the source. This has always kind of shocked me, an adaptation doesn't exist in a bubble and the original source material, be it book or play, is always worth reading. When The Library of America came out with a "four volumes of the 1960s" omnibus deluxe edition containing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I jumped at the chance to upgrade my tatty paperback movie tie-in. It wasn't until Rufus Sewell signed onto the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle that I noticed that it was one of the four books in this volume I'd bought.

From that moment I knew I needed to read this book and yet, as so often happens, time was against me but once again my blog's theme months came to the rescue. I would read The Man in the High Castle this November no matter what! As it turned out this book is tailor made for me. I have a love of historical fiction but I also have a love of Steampunk. And think about this, what is Steampunk but a more typical alt history in that it leans towards the fantastical? This book combines all this into a wonderful mashup that occasionally has some over-the-top science fiction elements. But being the type of author Philip K. Dick was I think we can forgive him Nazis colonizing Mars, all the ensuing space race jargon, and those super rockets that get you from Germany to San Francisco in a matter of minutes not hours because he uses them so sparingly. In fact his using these fantastical elements so sparingly makes them have a greater impact than if it was all about aliens. Because the truth is this book isn't heavy on the plot, it isn't about great world changing events, it's about a select few people and how they deal with the world around them and learning their truth. And a search for the truth is how I first found Philip K. Dick in a wonderful sense of synchronicity. The Man in the High Castle is a character study and I loved that.

The lead characters are Robert Childan, Nobusuke Tagomi, Frank Frink, and Juliana Frink, and none of them are fully sympathetic, which makes them human and therefore far more interesting. Childan is grasping and obsessed with his status, think of an Arnold Rimmer not in outer space but dealing antiques in an alternate San Francisco. Tagomi is I think the most fascinating, someone who the readers would see as an enemy, but is drawn so complexly, who is so multifaceted, that he instantly becomes the hero of the book. He's constantly being pushed outside his comfort zone, forced to face situations he could never have envisioned, and yet he rises admirably to all challenges. Childan and Tagomi represent the more Japanese side of the Axis powers, and what I connected to was this glimpse into a culture that is so dependant on status and behavior. This book gets you into another mindset, makes you question how you see the world around you. I couldn't help noticing parallels to Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and how that book also gave us this tantalizing acress. For me Frank was almost a non-character, because he was really just there to connect Juliana to the rest of the narrative. And while Philip K. Dick obviously suffers a bit from the objectification of women who are in thrall to men that was not only prevalent but expected at the time, the turn around at the very end put this trope in it's place.

One thing that runs through this character driven book as a unifying force is the voice of the oracle through the I Ching. While the characters constant reliance on this device of cleromancy might in clumsy hands have conceivably bogged down the narration, Philip K. Dick handles it in such a deft and skilled way that it becomes a character of it's own. He either really knows his stuff or is really good at making it look that way. This device is also where the biggest most thought-provoking elements of The Man in the High Castle arise. The idea that the oracle has access to alternate dimensions that can be achieved through higher thought and belief, that truth can be divined? Shivers up my spine. The scene where Tagomi is trying to come to grips with all that he has suffered and done over the course of the book as he sits on that park bench looking deep into a broach designed by Frank and reaches awareness because the Wu of the piece moved him and for an instant he comes into our world, not the alternate world he has always lived in, it's like the book transcended. In that moment The Man in the High Castle was no longer a character study, but a religious experience connecting all of the universes. This book became MORE than a book. It became an experience to never forget.     

An experience that relies heavily on Philip K. Dick being meta before meta was really a thing. The book that drives Juliana and much discussion about what-ifs and could-have-beens in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. A book that shows the Axis powers losing and the world becoming very much like the one we live in. Just think on that. From our POV we're reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII while the characters in that book are reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII that is similar to how our world actually is. So much fun is derived not in seeing the horror the world could have been in had the Allies lost, but in seeing how Abendsen wrote this other world. The subtle changes that still led to the same result. So much of this book is chaos theory in action. The world is a house of cards, change one thing, change so many things. Because the Allied Forces lost not because of anything that happened during the war but because of the assassination of FDR prior to the war. Change one thing change everything. And yet, somehow, the oracle sees the truth at the heart of it all. Perhaps the changes within Abendsen's book to our truth are inaccuracies on his part. As to why he would have inaccuracies in a book he'd written? Well, you'll just have to read this one to find out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, Blade Runner, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, I Ching, Japan, Library of America, Michael Crichton, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Man in the High Castle, WWII

The Man in the High Castle Season 1
Based on the book by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Alexa Davalos, Conor Leslie, Macall Gordon, Daniel Roebuck, Rupert Evans, DJ Qualls, Michael Gaston, Christine Chatelain, Callum Seagram Airlie, Carmen Mikkelsen, Darren Dolynski, Brennan Brown, Joel de la Fuente, Lee Shorten, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Arnold Chun, Carsten Norgaard, Hiro Kanagawa, Mayumi Yoshida, Daisuke Tsuji, Amy Okuda, Luke Kleintank, Rufus Sewell, Chelah Horsdal, Quinn Lord, Gracyn Shinyei, Genea Charpentier, Ray Proscia, Wolf Muser, Rick Worthy, and Camille Sullivan
Release Date: November 20th, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★
To Watch

Juliana Crain's sister has gotten herself into trouble and it will change the whole course of Juliana's life. She sees Trudy shot by the Kenpeitai in the street. Reeling from this shock she stumbles home and notices that she's holding a film reel that Trudy handed her. She can't believe what the film shows. A world where the Allied forces won WWII. A world where San Francisco isn't occupied by the Japanese and the Reich doesn't control the East Coast. When her boyfriend Frank comes home he urges Juliana to go to the police. Tell the Kenpeitai everything to clear her name of treason. Instead Juliana decides to deliver the film to the neutral zone in Trudy's place. She leaves for Canon City Colorado and doesn't look back. In her absence Frank is implicated in Trudy's crimes. The fact that his grandfather was Jewish means that he and his family have no standing. Before the misunderstanding is cleared up Frank will lose those closest to him all while covering for the woman he loves, a woman who is currently at sea. She has no idea who her contact is or who she is supposed to give the film to. There's a young man from New York, Joe, who she's not sure if she can trust. Yet his help saves her life and she learns that he too is part of the resistance. He too knows of the films and that they are to be delivered to "The Man in the High Castle."

Only Joe isn't really a member of the resistance. He has infiltrated the resistance on the orders of his leader, Obergruppenführer John Smith. Joe is a Nazis. Only his mission in Canon City didn't go to plan because of the arrival of Juliana Crain. Therefore he needs to prove his loyalty to the Reich. Seeing as Juliana Crain went home to San Francisco, it makes sense that Joe will follow her there, uncover all her contacts and discover the new film that has appeared. Only Julia has changed drastically since her experiences. She doesn't want to make all the deaths of those she loved be in vain and she has taken a job as a hostess for the Trade Minister of the Pacific States, Nobusuke Tagomi. Little does she know that this man whom the resistance views as the enemy might have very similar goals to her. He's been working with a high ranking Nazi to undermine the Reich to give Japan parity to Germany. Because another World War is looming. One where there can be only one victor. The films showing a different world might just hold the key to the truth of what is really going on, but will it all be in vain? Is war inevitable?

The difference between a good adaptation and a bad adaptation is that at the end you can't believe it was ten hours long. As you gobbled the episodes up they just flew by. Whereas a bad adaptation, it feels like work to watch each excruciating episode and ten hours can feel like a lifetime. Yes, I'm looking at you The Handmaid's Tale! The Man in the High Castle was the exact opposite in almost every way to that atrocious Atwood adaptation. Constantly compelling, faithful when needed, expansive when called on, always building on the writing of Philip K. Dick while making sure to create a show that was bingeworthy. But that's what happens when your show is created by someone who had astronomical success with The X-Files, AKA Frank Spotnitz, versus someone who's more known for kitschy Canadian shows, though I will say here to Bruce Miller, LOVE Men in Trees! Also The X-Files had a sustained look and feel, and that really can't be said for any of Bruce Miller's many shows. The noir feel that imbues ever scene of The Man in the High Castle is just perfect. While there is spycraft I'd liken it more to the Cold War than WWII which makes sense being set in 1962. But it's just such a fully visualized representation of this alternate world that it's staggering how complete it is from the advertising to the clothing. I just want more and more and more of it!

What I found interesting in translating this book to the screen is that the Japanese are depicted far more bleakly perhaps even verging on evil. The book is so concerned with the Nazi threat, as was Philip K. Dick himself, that comparatively the Japanese are depicted benignly. His personal bias came through in his writing. Therefore I don't know if this was some way to level the playing field and show that both surviving Axis powers were equally evil or to just create more strife in the lives of our protagonists who predominately live under Japanese rule. Because a clearer statement of the evil of the Japanese couldn't be made than having the Kenpeitai accidentally kill Frank's sister and her two children. Nothing that horrific happens in the book, that's for sure. But it serves a purpose in that it makes Frank invested in the resistance. Juliana's sister's death and Frank's sister's death unite them in their desire to overthrow the world they have come to accept. But what's more by showing the Japanese as evil and then going further into their characters, learning more about Tagomi, seeing how the head of the Kenpeitai bristles under what he has to do, all this gives us a deeper, layered, nuanced show, where the villains aren't necessarily so because of their acts but because they have been forced into these roles over time.

Though what this adaptation did superbly was expand Philip K. Dick's world so that we weren't just seeing the American and Japanese side of things but it also ensconsced us firmly within the Reich and in particular the Reich in America. Yes, this is literally going to be all about the importance of Rufus Sewell. I should say Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith, but seriously, wherever Rufus goes I follow. Season two of Victoria just wasn't the same without him in every single episode. Oh Lord M, you're breaking my heart. THIS is the genius of casting Rufus! Most people have some sort of connection to him as an actor, I mean he's seriously amazing. By casting him as a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi you know he's the bad guy and you aren't rooting for him, because seriously, you NEVER root for Nazis, instead you are drawn into the mindset of the Reich. You get a glimpse into how calculating and cruel their world is where old friends can become enemies that you are to interrogate over a family dinner and your own child's life hangs in the balance because of a hereditary illness. You see the Nazis in all their evil and you understand that evil. To understand your enemy is the first step in destroying them.

One major change that makes total sense in the shift of mediums is that instead of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy being a book within the book it's a series of films that look like newsreels that where shown in cinemas during and right after WWII. In the book it made sense for this alternate outcome of WWII to be disseminated as a book, but for a TV show it makes sense for it to be a film. Like to like in the different media. Because think how boring it would be watching people read long sections out of the book on screen? It's been proven that people have only about a 15-20 minute attention span when being read to, so firstly, everyone would have tuned out, and secondly? Snoozeville. Whereas think how much information can be gleaned in a short film and watching the characters reactions to that film? What's more it's far more visceral for the viewers to see images, many of which the are familiar with. The films, for the most part, show the world that we are familiar with. What's more in the book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is being read by everyone everywhere in the Japanese territories, whereas having films that have to be secreted around the country, films that even Hitler wants to watch? This just adds to the noir spycraft of the series.

Yet one thing that hasn't been explained yet, though it might in season two, is where the films come from and why The Man in the High Castle wants them. Obviously they are interesting, even Hitler is obsessed with them, but there's a bigger secret here. In the book The Man in the High Castle is the one disseminating the information, yet in this adaptation he's collecting it. Why!?! One theory I have is that perhaps he's collecting the films to eventually write the book in order to achieve the outcome in the book, which is informing the masses through the publication of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. But then where are the films coming from? Are they slipping through rips in time and space like Tagomi in that cliffhanger seeing him in OUR 1962 San Francisco? Are they actually showing the truth and that everyone is under some kind of mass hypnosis? I have other theories but I don't want to start spoiling everything. Whatever the reason for this reversal it has kept me guessing and to take a book that I've read and loved and make it new and fresh? Well that's truly amazing in my mind. I literally can not wait to start season two (right now!) but I'm also worried that once I binge it what will happen to me while I wait for season three? Seriously, what will happen!?! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Alternate History, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, Japan, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rufus Sewell, San Francisco, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Handmaid's Tale, The Man in the High Castle, The X-Files, WWII

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1962
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Allied Troops failed. The Axis powers won and divided up the spoils. Nazi Germany claimed the eastern United States while Imperial Japan created the Pacific States of America from the western coast and the Rocky Mountain States became a neutral buffer zone. It has been fifteen years since the end of the war. Fifteen years living under new laws, adapting to new cultures. Fifteen years of trying to forget the freedom Americans once had. But everyone has handled the situation in a way unique to themselves. Robert Childan has flourished under Japanese domination. His shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. deals with objects from America's past that the Japanese just love for their historicity. He has learned his trade well and understands the respect and protocol his clients demand. From Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese trade official dealing with a visiting Swedish industrialist, to the Kasouras, a young couple in love with Americana, Childan will go beyond what is necessary to please his customers. But soon his confidence in his life and his store will change forever when an item he has is accused of being a forgery.

Of course it is a forgery, there is no way that there are enough Colt .44s from the "wild west" to supply the demand for them, but Childan doesn't know he's just collateral damage from two disgruntled employees who work for his supplier, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, trying to go out on their own making jewelry instead of forgeries. One of these two men is Frank Frink, a man desperately hoping no one ever finds out he's Jewish and daydreaming that his wife, Juliana, will return to him. But Juliana is in the Rocky Mountain States where she's gotten involved with a man, Joe, who's obsessed with a book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by Hawthorne Abendsen, The Man in the High Castle. Abendsen never forgot his freedom and his book is about an Allied victory in WWII. A past and present that could have been. As powers are at play trying to once again change history and divide alliances with the Germans wanting sole control of the world, one woman will learn the truth and perhaps it will set everyone free.

Back when I was more of a film buff than book geek I was very much aware of the controversy surrounding Blade Runner and which release of the film was the true vision of Ridley Scott, similar to the issues surrounding Terry Gilliam's Brazil which lead to me buying a cheap VHS transfer for the directors cut at a Doctor Who convention. This desire for truth lead me to seek out and read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My introduction to his terse almost choppy writing style is forgotten in the fogs of time, or in this case a really long train trip to New York, but I still remember my film TA's awe that I bothered to go to the source. This has always kind of shocked me, an adaptation doesn't exist in a bubble and the original source material, be it book or play, is always worth reading. When The Library of America came out with a "four volumes of the 1960s" omnibus deluxe edition containing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I jumped at the chance to upgrade my tatty paperback movie tie-in. It wasn't until Rufus Sewell signed onto the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle that I noticed that it was one of the four books in this volume I'd bought.

From that moment I knew I needed to read this book and yet, as so often happens, time was against me but once again my blog's theme months came to the rescue. I would read The Man in the High Castle this November no matter what! As it turned out this book is tailor made for me. I have a love of historical fiction but I also have a love of Steampunk. And think about this, what is Steampunk but a more typical alt history in that it leans towards the fantastical? This book combines all this into a wonderful mashup that occasionally has some over-the-top science fiction elements. But being the type of author Philip K. Dick was I think we can forgive him Nazis colonizing Mars, all the ensuing space race jargon, and those super rockets that get you from Germany to San Francisco in a matter of minutes not hours because he uses them so sparingly. In fact his using these fantastical elements so sparingly makes them have a greater impact than if it was all about aliens. Because the truth is this book isn't heavy on the plot, it isn't about great world changing events, it's about a select few people and how they deal with the world around them and learning their truth. And a search for the truth is how I first found Philip K. Dick in a wonderful sense of synchronicity. The Man in the High Castle is a character study and I loved that.

The lead characters are Robert Childan, Nobusuke Tagomi, Frank Frink, and Juliana Frink, and none of them are fully sympathetic, which makes them human and therefore far more interesting. Childan is grasping and obsessed with his status, think of an Arnold Rimmer not in outer space but dealing antiques in an alternate San Francisco. Tagomi is I think the most fascinating, someone who the readers would see as an enemy, but is drawn so complexly, who is so multifaceted, that he instantly becomes the hero of the book. He's constantly being pushed outside his comfort zone, forced to face situations he could never have envisioned, and yet he rises admirably to all challenges. Childan and Tagomi represent the more Japanese side of the Axis powers, and what I connected to was this glimpse into a culture that is so dependant on status and behavior. This book gets you into another mindset, makes you question how you see the world around you. I couldn't help noticing parallels to Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and how that book also gave us this tantalizing acress. For me Frank was almost a non-character, because he was really just there to connect Juliana to the rest of the narrative. And while Philip K. Dick obviously suffers a bit from the objectification of women who are in thrall to men that was not only prevalent but expected at the time, the turn around at the very end put this trope in it's place.

One thing that runs through this character driven book as a unifying force is the voice of the oracle through the I Ching. While the characters constant reliance on this device of cleromancy might in clumsy hands have conceivably bogged down the narration, Philip K. Dick handles it in such a deft and skilled way that it becomes a character of it's own. He either really knows his stuff or is really good at making it look that way. This device is also where the biggest most thought-provoking elements of The Man in the High Castle arise. The idea that the oracle has access to alternate dimensions that can be achieved through higher thought and belief, that truth can be divined? Shivers up my spine. The scene where Tagomi is trying to come to grips with all that he has suffered and done over the course of the book as he sits on that park bench looking deep into a broach designed by Frank and reaches awareness because the Wu of the piece moved him and for an instant he comes into our world, not the alternate world he has always lived in, it's like the book transcended. In that moment The Man in the High Castle was no longer a character study, but a religious experience connecting all of the universes. This book became MORE than a book. It became an experience to never forget.     

An experience that relies heavily on Philip K. Dick being meta before meta was really a thing. The book that drives Juliana and much discussion about what-ifs and could-have-beens in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. A book that shows the Axis powers losing and the world becoming very much like the one we live in. Just think on that. From our POV we're reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII while the characters in that book are reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII that is similar to how our world actually is. So much fun is derived not in seeing the horror the world could have been in had the Allies lost, but in seeing how Abendsen wrote this other world. The subtle changes that still led to the same result. So much of this book is chaos theory in action. The world is a house of cards, change one thing, change so many things. Because the Allied Forces lost not because of anything that happened during the war but because of the assassination of FDR prior to the war. Change one thing change everything. And yet, somehow, the oracle sees the truth at the heart of it all. Perhaps the changes within Abendsen's book to our truth are inaccuracies on his part. As to why he would have inaccuracies in a book he'd written? Well, you'll just have to read this one to find out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, Blade Runner, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, I Ching, Japan, Library of America, Michael Crichton, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Man in the High Castle, WWII

Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: January 27th, 1992
Format: Paperback, 339 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lieutenant Peter J. Smith left homicide for the more stable hours and better pay of being a Special Services Officer. He's called in when a diplomat gets drunk or there's a translator needed at the scene of a crime. When he gets the call to come to the scene of a murder that occurred during the Nakamoto Corporation's grand opening of their new Los Angeles headquarters Smith's world gets turned upside down. The first thing that happens in this unusual case is that he is requested to bring Captain John Connor with him, who, while in semi retirement, is fluent in Japanese and has a divisive relationship with them. Up on the 46th floor the victim, Cheryl Lynn Austin, seems to be nothing more then an inconvenience. But as the two cops dig deeper Cheryl had strong ties to the Japanese community and quite probably was a pawn in their business. The one clear thing is that the Japanese will do anything to delay and obfuscate the investigation so that the police reach the decision that is most convenient to them. This is business and to them business is war; casualties are to be expected and they are willing to exert pressure where it is needed, even on the police.  

Rising Sun has the unique distinction of being the first Michael Crichton book I read under my own steam. This wasn't homework. No matter how great Jurassic Park is it still was for school not for me. Therefore reading Rising Sun was something to luxuriate in, so obviously I took it on vacation with me. Though me and reading on vacation oddly don't go together very well. I have several books that have taken long journeys with me but were never picked up once on that trip. Pride and Prejudice went to D.C. and New York, Soul Music went to Ontario, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy went to San Francisco, Thyme in a Flask went to Arkansas, and I never read a page of any of them while on vacation. There's just too much else to do. But there's something about the driving force of the narrative in Rising Sun that made it different then all these other books.

Despite being set during a chilly February in Los Angeles, I will always associate Rising Sun with the heat and humidity of a Wisconsin summer in Door County. We had a three bedroom suite at the Pheasant Park Resort in Sister Bay. I had the dubious honor of having the room with the whirlpool tub. Which was right next to the bed. In a room that didn't have air conditioning. And yes, everyone insisted on using the tub. Let it be known this is a mistake I never repeated. Even if the room hadn't conspired against me to keep me awake all night the book would have anyway. I lay up all night sweating through what little sleepwear I had on being just absorbed by the story. While yes, I had read quite a fair amount of The Cat Who... mysteries by Lillian Jackson Braun at this time in my young life, there's nothing like the first time you read a well plotted mystery, and that is exactly what Rising Sun is. Re-reading it all these years later I again devoured it in only two days. But it's amazing how much more insight I have over twenty years later.    

What sets Rising Sun apart from almost every other book Crichton wrote under his own name is that it doesn't hinge on his two most used tropes, advanced technology going awry or medicine. This book can in no way be classified as science fiction and this makes it unique in his canon. In fact it almost feels as if Crichton felt the need to show that he could write a solid mystery without any gimmicks. He wrote a straight up first person narrative that has this noir vibe that I didn't pick up on back in high school. In fact, having recently read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest you can see the similarities and how Rising Sun would fit perfectly in this hardboiled genre. There's organized forces working against the protagonists, there's the cynical attitude of both Connor and Smith to the Japanese, by the Japanese running a slander campaign against Smith you question his reliability, turning him into an anti-hero. Plus, hardboiled fiction is known for it's unlikable characters, even the murder victim is unsympathetic in this case. Crichton excels at this genre and it's no wonder that Hard Case Crime jumped at the chance to publish his John Lange back catalog. I should probably get to reading those.

Though despite all the good there is about this book with it's mystery and driving narrative there is some severe xenophobia going on here. The xenophobia I think is oddly why the book correlates well with hardboiled fiction because writing of that era wasn't culturally sensitive. So yes, while this book entertains me, an older, wiser me is sitting back and going, damn, that's a little racist don't you think Michael? How about we tone it down a bit, make it less of a one sided argument? And saying the Japanese are more racist then Americans doesn't really help your cause, it just makes it seem even more vindictive. With the rants against the Japanese, as well as a few aimed at the Germans, I felt like I was having a dinner conversation with an embittered elderly relative who survived WWII and was going to take their hatred to the grave. Side note, my great aunt did take her hatred to the grave. So, all in all, I can see why this book got mixed reviews. It's a good story, just maybe a little too polarizing and vindictive.

But there is an ironic truth nestled in the vitriol against the Japanese. Their "Saturday Meetings" in the book where they are deciding what to do about America, well, if the meetings were real or just the imaginings of Crichton, they have turned out to be oddly prescient. Basically Crichton states that the Japanese could see us going to hell in a hand basket, and really, look at the world around us? Unemployment, unrest, looting, riots, protests, murders! I mean, what if there was a time that we could have changed the course of our country and turned a blind eye instead? What if there was something we could have done to not get where we are? As usual, after reading some Crichton you are left with more to think about then when you started and also wondering if perhaps he was some kind of precog...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cat Who, Crichton Celebration, Dashiell Hammett, Hardboiled, Japan, Japanese, John Lange, Jurassic Park, Lilian Jackson Braun, Michael Crichton, Mystery, Noir, Precognition, Racism, Red Harvest, Rising Sun, WWII