Phillip K. Dick’s books have long been influential among science fiction authors and the movie adaptations of his stories are generally very well received. He’s probably the luckiest author alive in that sense. Well, Amazon recently made a pilot episode for a series based on his award-winning 1962 book, ‘The Man in the High Castle‘ and it won over the viewers on Amazon Prime. It became Amazon’s most watched pilot ever and it was well enough received that it was soon greenlit for a ten-episode series. So of course they released a new trailer for it.

‘The Man in the High Castle’ is an alternate history story where the Axis powers won World War II and Japan and Germany took over North America and they each rule over their respective side of the Rocky Mountains. Neither side content to share the world but neither wanting to start another open war so soon, they settle down into a cold war, parallel to the real world cold war of the same era. As one would imagine, things aren’t going very well for the world. The book follows several different characters who are all loosely connected in some way who, for the most part, are just trying to get by. A major part of the book is an in-universe alternate history called ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ where the United States won the war. Things start getting kinda weird from there.

It’s not exactly clear how Amazon is going to be adapting the novel, since it starts getting rather meta-textual and it has a rather open ending. Dick had always intended to write a sequel but never got around to it. Series co-creator and lead writer Frank Spotnitz has said that they are aiming to stay mostly true to the book but he’s also said that there will be changes made. How many and what kind hasn’t been fully revealed yet.

The pilot episode of ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is available right now just for Amazon Prime members free with their membership. The rest of the season will be released (again, only for Amazon Prime members) later this year.

So what do you think? Have you seen the pilot already? Are you looking forward to the rest of the series? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Deadline