Oh you two crazy kids, of course you don't get it, you had to be there! ;-)
What I'm saying is there's roughly two and a fraction generations that lived or had close family that lived or died WW II and hence felt, believed, wondered if we'd escaped Dick's High Castle world by the skin of our teeth. So yes it was a riveting, a there but for the grace of..., go I, tale for us and the Hugo voters when he published it.
I may be (Of course I am, you callow youth, why back in our day...GRIN!) teasing you a bit but I'm not faulting your take on the H'Castle, just trying to explain a bit how and why we took it in '62.
Not his best, nor was he, in my opinion the best of the era, but not at all bad.
This is some awesome insight. I totally get what you’re saying and I’m glad you gave us that point of view. I imagine with the war so fresh in the social conscience of the time, it must have been a pretty intense read. I wish I had kept that in mind while reading it.
BUT I will disagree with you on Dick, he’s the man!
Thanks for this—it's probably how we should've approached the book, seeing as it was written only a couple decades after the war to an audience of people who had lived through it, but it completely went over my head.
I agree with your assessment. It's not the best book of all time, but it's a product of its time and pretty good anyway.
Even though I was tempted to give the book a go here, life-stuff kept getting in the way so I was unable to. With that noted...
What you both said above pretty much echoes what I have heard others say... ESPECIALLY those who have read the book and watched the series by the same name. The series adds a character (the very compelling John Smith), and with the blessing of PKD's estate to boot (they were actually involved in the production). For me, MitHC without Smith... well, it just wouldn't feel right LOL
That noted, I personal wished I had stopped watching after Season Two; the last two seasons they abandoned nuanced storytelling for preaching 'progressive' doctrine, and by the end of four they had pretty much ruined the series for me. However, those first two seasons? Well worth a viewing, IMO :-)
Thanks so much for sharing these, and I will make an(other) effort to get engaged with the next book.
Looking forward to you joining the next read! Hopefully you enjoy Timeline. Michael Crichton was a huge influence on me as a kid so I’m looking forward to reading it.
Glad you gave us a warning on the series post season 2. We’ll definitely need to give it a watch.
Thanks for this! We've been on the fence about watching the series, but based on what you said, we'll give it a shot (and probably abandon it come Season Three).
You didn't miss much with this one. It was our best pick so far, but that's not saying much. I hope you get into the next one! It seems like it will continue the physics theme, which I'm pretty excited about.
It is a “many worlds” plot. The screen play by Harlan Ellison, “City on the Edge of Forever” has a remarkably similar plot line though the characters are using a future recording of multiple realities to discern how the Nazis won WW2 instead of the I Ching, so a different reference frame but still the “many worlds” root plot.
“Schrödinger's cat” is a plot that repeats in PK Dicks novels and in Sci Fi stories in general. It is a very real problem in Physics as well, it may be responsible for dark energy/mass. This is defiantly responsible for the H-bomb and the 1969s.
Reality is not instantaneous. The speed of light has nothing to do with light. AT ALL.
Time/ causality is a distance. A second is literally 186k miles. So with simple substitution we get; s = 186k miles, c = 1, e = m.
This also explains why light is both a wave and a particle. (I.e. because of quantum reality collapse states. 1- Light particles are both there, and 2- the reality of exactly where the particles are has not bothered to resolve yet)
Harlan Ellison is awesome. “I have no mouth and I must scream” is a brutal short story. I’ve never watched Star Trek, but I’m sure I’d like it.
I need to do more research on Schrodinger’s Cat. We’re reading Timeline for our next book club pick, so I think we’ll be speaking more about this soon.
Read the first chapter of Wheelers “Spacetime Physics”. A tale of two surveyors.
I had the AI do a short summary. Basically the speed of light is 1 without units.
—
Yes, in “Spacetime Physics,” Taylor and Wheeler emphasize that time can be treated as a physical dimension akin to spatial dimensions. This concept is crucial for understanding special relativity. By measuring time in units of distance (e.g., meters), it becomes easier to visualize and compute relationships in spacetime.
In the book, they often use the speed of light, c , to convert time into spatial units. Since c is a constant (approximately 3 \times 10^8 meters per second), any time interval t can be converted to a spatial distance by multiplying it by c (i.e., ct is measured in meters). This approach simplifies the mathematical treatment of spacetime and aligns with the idea that space and time are intertwined dimensions of a single entity: spacetime.
If you are interested in a modern ‘new’ story of a similar many worlds plot genre the two novels “The Peripheral” and “Agency” by William Gibson are excellent.
Oh you two crazy kids, of course you don't get it, you had to be there! ;-)
What I'm saying is there's roughly two and a fraction generations that lived or had close family that lived or died WW II and hence felt, believed, wondered if we'd escaped Dick's High Castle world by the skin of our teeth. So yes it was a riveting, a there but for the grace of..., go I, tale for us and the Hugo voters when he published it.
I may be (Of course I am, you callow youth, why back in our day...GRIN!) teasing you a bit but I'm not faulting your take on the H'Castle, just trying to explain a bit how and why we took it in '62.
Not his best, nor was he, in my opinion the best of the era, but not at all bad.
This is some awesome insight. I totally get what you’re saying and I’m glad you gave us that point of view. I imagine with the war so fresh in the social conscience of the time, it must have been a pretty intense read. I wish I had kept that in mind while reading it.
BUT I will disagree with you on Dick, he’s the man!
Thanks for this—it's probably how we should've approached the book, seeing as it was written only a couple decades after the war to an audience of people who had lived through it, but it completely went over my head.
I agree with your assessment. It's not the best book of all time, but it's a product of its time and pretty good anyway.
Even though I was tempted to give the book a go here, life-stuff kept getting in the way so I was unable to. With that noted...
What you both said above pretty much echoes what I have heard others say... ESPECIALLY those who have read the book and watched the series by the same name. The series adds a character (the very compelling John Smith), and with the blessing of PKD's estate to boot (they were actually involved in the production). For me, MitHC without Smith... well, it just wouldn't feel right LOL
That noted, I personal wished I had stopped watching after Season Two; the last two seasons they abandoned nuanced storytelling for preaching 'progressive' doctrine, and by the end of four they had pretty much ruined the series for me. However, those first two seasons? Well worth a viewing, IMO :-)
Thanks so much for sharing these, and I will make an(other) effort to get engaged with the next book.
Looking forward to you joining the next read! Hopefully you enjoy Timeline. Michael Crichton was a huge influence on me as a kid so I’m looking forward to reading it.
Glad you gave us a warning on the series post season 2. We’ll definitely need to give it a watch.
Thanks for this! We've been on the fence about watching the series, but based on what you said, we'll give it a shot (and probably abandon it come Season Three).
You didn't miss much with this one. It was our best pick so far, but that's not saying much. I hope you get into the next one! It seems like it will continue the physics theme, which I'm pretty excited about.
It is a “many worlds” plot. The screen play by Harlan Ellison, “City on the Edge of Forever” has a remarkably similar plot line though the characters are using a future recording of multiple realities to discern how the Nazis won WW2 instead of the I Ching, so a different reference frame but still the “many worlds” root plot.
“Schrödinger's cat” is a plot that repeats in PK Dicks novels and in Sci Fi stories in general. It is a very real problem in Physics as well, it may be responsible for dark energy/mass. This is defiantly responsible for the H-bomb and the 1969s.
Reality is not instantaneous. The speed of light has nothing to do with light. AT ALL.
Time/ causality is a distance. A second is literally 186k miles. So with simple substitution we get; s = 186k miles, c = 1, e = m.
This also explains why light is both a wave and a particle. (I.e. because of quantum reality collapse states. 1- Light particles are both there, and 2- the reality of exactly where the particles are has not bothered to resolve yet)
Harlan Ellison is awesome. “I have no mouth and I must scream” is a brutal short story. I’ve never watched Star Trek, but I’m sure I’d like it.
I need to do more research on Schrodinger’s Cat. We’re reading Timeline for our next book club pick, so I think we’ll be speaking more about this soon.
Read the first chapter of Wheelers “Spacetime Physics”. A tale of two surveyors.
I had the AI do a short summary. Basically the speed of light is 1 without units.
—
Yes, in “Spacetime Physics,” Taylor and Wheeler emphasize that time can be treated as a physical dimension akin to spatial dimensions. This concept is crucial for understanding special relativity. By measuring time in units of distance (e.g., meters), it becomes easier to visualize and compute relationships in spacetime.
In the book, they often use the speed of light, c , to convert time into spatial units. Since c is a constant (approximately 3 \times 10^8 meters per second), any time interval t can be converted to a spatial distance by multiplying it by c (i.e., ct is measured in meters). This approach simplifies the mathematical treatment of spacetime and aligns with the idea that space and time are intertwined dimensions of a single entity: spacetime.
The show introduced me to the i-Ching, only because I read the book later (I usually try for the opposite order). 💕
If you are interested in a modern ‘new’ story of a similar many worlds plot genre the two novels “The Peripheral” and “Agency” by William Gibson are excellent.
It would probably be good for me to check out a book written after 2000. Haven’t read one in a while. Thanks for the suggestion!