When we put together ourlist of books that we were pumped about do out in 2016 , one particularly stand out : United States of Japan , bill as a ‘ spectral successor of The Man in the High Castle ’ . It ’s got giant mechs , alternate story , and did I mention giant mechs ?
United States of Japan arrive in bookstores this coming calendar week , and call for piazza in an alternate history where the United States loses World War II . Fast forward to the eighties , where a insurgent telecasting game is ingest wait , and one soldier , Captain Beniko Ishimura , is tasked with tracking down the Almighty , only to expose that there ’s more to the story .
Peter Tieryas antecedently wrote Watering Heaven and Bald New World , and has work in the film industry as a VFX artist ( with photographic film like Men in Black 3 , Guardians of the Galaxy , Alice in Wonderland , and Hotel Transylvania on his resume ) and has work as a proficient writer for LucasArts .
Your novel , United States of Japan is billed as a ‘ spiritual sequel ’ to Philip K. Dick ’s Man in the High Castle : what propel you to drop a line your book , and how did you head cleared of simply copy PKD ’s book ?
I ’ve always been a fan of Philip K. Dick , but it was during my time give out to school at Berkeley that my interest in him really grew . He was trace places I was familiar with , ideas that I could relate to as I spend those early years debating with prof about metaphysics and macrocosm . The Man in the High Castle stood out for me because it focus so much on the mankind of the mass through extremely difficult time . plain , I did n’t live in an authoritarian system , but I was struggling just to get by because of some self-aggrandizing financial difficulty . As one of the characters , Mr. Tagomi , puts it : “ We are all insects . Groping towards something dreadful or godlike . ”
More than a decennium later , I revisited all of PKD ’s playscript including High Castle . I was surprised to find out he wanted to write a sequel . regrettably , write the sequel accept a mental toll as he had to dive back into the psychological science of Nazis which is why , he explicate , “ I ’ve never drop a line a sequel to it : it ’s too frightful , too awful . ”
I understood his feeling all too well . I ’d wanted to compose a tarradiddle revolving around the tragic result on the Asian side of WWII and had been researching the stuff for several year . This was because I listen so many write up about the Japanese occupation of Asia growing up , like how women in the Qingdao area covered their faces with clay so they could n’t get nobble by Nipponese soldier . I spent two years in Korea as a kid , and some of the elders I met could mouth fluent Japanese and even had Japanese names which they were grant as kid . They really did n’t care the fact that I loved playing my Nintendo , only because it was from a Japanese company . I did n’t bonk why back then , but I was shock when I later learned that 17 - 22 million civilian were bolt down in the Pacific War and many others were imprisoned , tortured , and enslaved . The more I delved into the research , the more I read about endure on all sides . I was obsess by the story of survivors , thinking about how much they ’d endure . Then I marvel why so few here in the States knew about that past tense .
When I hear PKD wanted to do a sequel , the idea of attempting a religious subsequence took root word . I wanted to make certain in some form , those Asian fib from WWII were tell apart here in the west . But in USJ , I ’m not seek to redress the past because it ’s about more than the Imperial Japanese Army , which is very different from current Japan . It ’s a look at Caesarism and the way a military commonwealth affects its people across different nation .
Japanese culture has had a Brobdingnagian influence for me grow up . There ’s so many films , books , and game I love that have to a great extent act upon me . At the same time , I wanted to practice historic facts as a launching full stop for any speculative factor in the writing , let in the way the IJA bear out warfare in all its bloody brutality . state of war is frightful and there ’s no glossing over that .
I also wanted to address simple cultural facts that I cogitate would make the Bible more authentic . Take the I Ching which is a crucial part of the book . When PKD really asked the Japanese translator what he consider about High Castle , the response was a blunt : “ You ’ve also confused Formosan refinement and Japanese culture … The I Ching ’s Chinese and not Japanese . No Japanese would ever use some Confucian classic . Only foreigners use those . ” Even when I pass a few years in China , I never see anyone use the I Ching the way they did in High Castle .
USJ was also about sample to resolve many of the questions I had after first read The Man in the High Castle . How different would bet on , the cyberspace , and social customs be abide by a nuclear fusion reaction of two very dissimilar culture after fifty years of Japanese majestic normal ? Would they have their own version of a Vietnam War , a battle quagmire that resulted in stalemate and a soul searching individuality crisis ? Would they marvel about the moral ramifications of having used an nuclear weapon system on America , the same way Americans have enquire about Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? What would the spiritual face of the surviving Americans be like , ram to acknowledge the Emperor as a living god ? Having the taradiddle take place in the recent eighties would also have in mind most of the people who endure through the war were bushed . To this young multiplication , majestic principle was a fact of life , giving it a whole different flavor as well .
in the end , speculating on the substitute world engineering was part of the challenge and joy of writing USJ .
That includes biochemical advance made potential by human experiment , an elaborate system of regulating masses base on gambling habits , and gigantic mechas , a result of one of my childhood passions- mammoth robots .
What about Man in the High Castle appealed to you when you first take it ? What ’s stuck with you out of the book ?
When I first picked up High Castle , I was expecting something like Wolfenstein . Lots of Nazis fighting Americans and wild science fiction twists and turn in PKD mode . rather , I got something that was almost kin to a spectral journeying revolving around the inner struggles of an imperfect cast of characters . I admit , the first time I interpret it , I liked it , but did n’t in full comprehend what PKD was go for . I subsequently realized his subject matter resonated at a inscrutable level . Surrounded by all these evils , how do people live and preserve their humanity when high society is so inhumane ? Everyone handles it in dissimilar way , and it was this conflict that appealed to me the most . Even though PKD and I are dissimilar writer , I really tried to capture that spirit in USJ . I also thought the ending had an equivocalness that was unexpected and persistent . It leave me wanting to know more about the universe and what happened a few decades afterward .
Rather than a novel , your characters work with subversive video games : what games in special inspire you here ? How did your background in the motion-picture show and gaming reality aid you here ?
One of the cock-a-hoop personal experiences that influence USJ was my time solve at EA in Los Angeles . They were most well bang for their Medal of Honor games and were just branching out into other franchises . I was engage to make for on Goldeneye , but many of my friends were working on Medal of Honor : Pacific Assault . I was so astonied by the level of endowment and their allegiance to getting all the fact about the warfare mightily . The iterative cognitive process was mind - numbing as they seek feedback from so many different source . This was also when the LA studio apartment was begin to expand and it feel like such a vivacious and amazing billet . It was n’t all great , and I ca n’t attest to the lineament of the games , but the artists and engineer were mostly top - mountain pass . It was a really astonishing time behind the scenes and I formed many close friendships then . I also got to learn peck of stories about game development in Japan and stories about famous developer , many of which were illuminating .
One of the moments that still strikes me was the first time I was playing around in the biz locomotive . It was much more clunky then , not like now where Unreal , GameMaker , and Unity are very intuitive to pluck up and use . I did some canonical AI pathing , place units and what - not . I was surprised that the vestigial logic which seemed simple when I design it was breaking so easily . Even cause a social unit to traverse from point A to vitamin B complex to degree Celsius using flags would get disrupted by terrain or enemies . The AI had a life of its own , interpreting my commands in ways I had n’t expected . It was like I got a glimpse of the universe and how complex all its rules were in interaction .
A bunch of these thinking were on my idea as I wrote about the simulation in the game that the Empire utilise to plan their various battle tactics . Gaming is no longer a civilian endeavour , but a military one , shine under the section of propaganda . One of the two independent characters , Ben Ishimura , has the office of being a secret plan censor . So I definitely drew on my background knowledge in gambling to capture the item of the companionship and the way the engine forge .
As for which game inspired me , Civilization was a big one ( interestingly enough , Civilization also inspired Iain M. Banks ’s Excession ) . Also , an old Sega Genesis game call Herzog Zwei , Shining Force , Metal Gear Solid , Katamari Damacy , multiple first person - crap-shooter , MMOs , and so many more .
About a year or so ago , we got to check out a test kit of the Oculus Rift . When I put it on , I felt like I was in a futuristic hangar bay and attempt to move forward , only to crash into a cubicle . I was amazed by the engineering and question , what if this was available to people twenty years ago ? Since gaming has almost unlimited funds from the Empire in USJ , there would be a lot more resource allocate to it as well . I had a band of fun authorship and speculating on those sequence , and frequently had to pull myself back from going too furious with the musical theme because I was enjoying them so much .
What appeal to you the most in writing an substitute story of the United States losing the Second World War ?
catch to play Legos with account . I assembled , broke up , reassemble , and conjured up a whole new timeline . Some elements are sinister and others take on completely dissimilar connotations that spill visible radiation on contemporaneous events . I ’ve mentioned video game and amusement . I wanted to venture into some of the more complicated historical upshot like the internment of Japanese - Americans , the Cold War , and alternating edition of political fight . Even if the nation and instrumentalist are dissimilar , are hoi polloi still the same ? Do historical patterns switch that dramatically , or are they the development of geopolitical shifts that would have inevitably happened ? One instance is where proxy wars hap between the Nazis and the Empire , both afraid that capitulate in a small land would guide to a domino impression , the same way of life America oppose with the Soviet Union .
There are three major force in play in the book ; the USJ , Nazis , and Americans rebelling as the George Washington group . Each have their own version of history that stray from fact to serve their own purpose . feel out who ’s speaking the truth is part of the jigsaw the characters ( and readers ) are trying to uncover .
Akiko Tsukino and Beniko Ishimura are our eyes and ears in this world , but they also interpret dissimilar way of archeological site for the alternate account . Akiko is a fellow member of the secret police who strongly consider in the Emperor and enforce his decrees religiously . Her fervor be those who follow blindly , convert the Emperor is divine . Ben is a veteran who takes comfort in the vice the Empire offers , wanting to turn a loss himself in pleasures rather than deal with the gritty realness . Having live through one of the high-risk civil insurrection in the USJ ’s history , he is torn by guilt trip from his preceding actions . The two form an alliance but are perpetually at odds with each other . Their philosophical water parting is the duologue that informs the story , drive it onward .
You place an interesting focal point on the racial tensions between the Japanese and Americans , and you speak quite a bit to ethnic identicalness . What did you draw on for this ?
gamy Castle was the first source . PKD touches upon how the Japanese have become the predominant race and one of the characters , Robert Childan , really wants to fit in with a Nipponese couple . Being Asian in reality meant you were in a posture of privilege . That was a really interesting theme I want to expand upon and explore . The two main characters , like many throughout the USJ , are of miscellaneous ethnicity ; Agent Akiko is half - Gallic , half - Korean , and Captain Ishimura is part - Nipponese , part - Taiwanese . When the non - Japanese Americans take more right hand , their protest are violently crush . Segregation exists where Japanese have their own bathrooms and seats on underground , and everyone else has to make room for them ( unless you ’re military ) . Even the fact that Ben is half Japanese mean he gets privilege others do n’t .
Everyone else is dismiss or viewed as a threat .
I hoped by portraying this dividing line , lector could view the current racial moral force in a different illumination . In discussing most elements of racism in the past , it ’s unremarkably from an anglo - centric view . How would those issues be watch if told from a non - anglo perspective with non - POCs being subjected to racial discrimination ? Would the discussion have more immediacy ? Or would it derive across as offensive ? If offensive , why is it not offensive when talking about POCs in the same light ?
At the same clock time , it ’s important that my purpose focus on recount the story and letting the reader make their own closing . In USJ , I ’m not trying to persuade reader one manner or another . Rather , to deposit questions and , hopefully , make them wonder .
What did you retrieve of the Amazon.com serial publication for Man in the High Castle ?
There were two rationality I nearly yield up writing United States of Japan . The first was because I was afraid of the controversy it would beget tackle what is a really sensible time of history among Asians ( even now , it ’s an interesting water parting among referee conversant with the history of WWII and those not , the latter commenting on the vehemence in the leger , while the former mentioning how empathic and mediocre it is ) . I knew I want to be respectful in drawing on that account and spent a lot of time editing it to ensure we maintained that .
The second was when I listen they were throw a telecasting show free-base on the book . When I first set about write USJ a few year ago , there was n’t a show yet . But then I heard the show was getting made and I take myself , should I stop ? Then I heard Syfy resolve not to go forward with it and so I souse into USJ which was around 2013 . I was halfway through when I heard that Amazon had greenlit a pilot for the show . Again , I wonder , should I depart ? Would mass impeach me of just being derivative ? But I know the ideas I had were dissimilar enough where they could remain firm alone and as it was just a pilot , there was no guarantee a full time of year would get made . By the time I finish in tardy 2014 , I knew they were going to make a season out of the book . I was n’t sure if this would hurt my chances so I institutionalise it to Angry Robot who , fortunately , accepted it . I felt I want to recognize the obvious inhalation seed , kind of like how Brazil make nod to 1984 , L.A. Confidential gives nod to Chinatown , and even Soldier places itself next to Blade Runner ( sorry about the last instance ! ) . But my sensitivity to the High Castle has prevent me from watching the series up until now , especially because I do n’t require to be influenced by the show , even on a subconscious layer . Having said that , I really require to see it and come USJ ’s release in a few days , one of my very first rewards is to follow the show in its totality .
What do you have issue forth up next ?
For my next Quran , I ’m doing something a little more light - hearted and humourous . I ’m hoping it ’s a fresh take on the detective story , only injected with scientific discipline fiction component and mysteries revolving around temporal anomalies . It ’s something I ’ve been working on for over a decade and harken back to some of the very first science fiction report I fell in honey with which were by Cordwainer Smith . It was because he pass so much time in Asia and integrate many of the Asiatic myths / stories I grew up with into his work that I revel them so much . His wild narration about the Instrumentality and telepathic cat pin - illume pilots and sense - destroying scanners have always cohere with me . I bring up this also to designate out how the music genre has evolved and I ’m so excited to see the way writers are pushing the bound of narrative . Ken Liu ’s The Dandelion Dynasty , Wes Chu ’s Tao series , Aliette de Bodard ’s House of Shattered Wings , are a few examples of absolute grandness , and there ’s so many others .
I would also love the chance to jump back into the world of United States of Japan . This metre though , I want to tell a totally original story without being bound / restricted in an effort to pay testimonial to High Castle nor the Asiatic narration I ’d ab initio desire to say ( which I did in USJ ) . The sandbox is in place .
meter to fructify things on blast .
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