by Lew Ritter
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is an Amazon Studios series about an alternate history in which Germany and Japan triumphed in WWII and divided up the American continent. Adapted from an award winning novel by noted Sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick, it is produced by Ridley Scott and was developed as a series by FRANK SPOTNITZ, one of the writers behind the X- FILES.
The tone of the series is established at the beginning of the pilot with the haunting theme song in which a woman sings EDELWEISS, a paean to the German Father Land, while in the background, the map of the US shows the advancing German and Japanese forces.
The series begins in the United States, circa 1962. The eastern half of the country is part of the “Greater Nazi Reich,” and the western half now is called the “Japanese Pacific States.”