Philip K Dick's sequel to The Man in the High Castle was universally panned when published posthumously and against the late author's wishes. 1/

The 1999 novel laid out a grotesque and, the critics complained, ultimately unconvincing vision of a future American dystopia. 2/

"By the year 2018“, the novel began, “tensions were running high between the United States and its neighbors to the North and South." 3/

"The former superpower had alienated its traditional allies and launched trade wars against the trading partners it most relied upon. 4/

"The federal government was in a shambles, with every major agency headed by a man dedicated to undermining its mission and purpose. 5/

"Isolated, beholden to the Soviet Union, and devoid of other options, the US cozied up to the murderous grandson of Kim Il Sung." 6/

Dick's incomplete final novel went on to describe the path by which a failed businessman, grifter, and television host ascended to the 7/

US presidency through an unfailing ability to exploit every worst tendency of the national character. 8/

In this fictional American, diplomacy was dead; the president dictated government policy 140 characters at a time in poorly spelled edicts... 9/

cast into every living room around the world on a two-way teletype machine favored by resurgent neo-Nazis and vapid "celebutantes”. 10/

In one particularly chilling subplot, a paramilitary organization with extensive extrajudicial powers prepared immanent mass deportations, 11/

while Latino children, torn from their families, were housed in abandoned mega-malls ("Wallmarkets"), sleeping in cages... 12/

beneath stenciled murals of the insane president, embellished with nonsensical quotations from his ghostwritten bestseller on the art of grift. 13/

The Second Amendment patriots, with their hoards of guns and ammo at the ready in case of government overreach, turned a blind eye... 14/

or, more often, looked on approvingly. It had been about white supremacy, not government tyranny, all along. 15/

The free press was branded as the enemy of the people; the law enforcement community dismissed as a partisan conspiracy. 16/

Science was dismissed as religion, facts as elitist, expertise as treason. Amidst mass atrocities, the country veered toward breakdown. 17/

...And at this point I threw the book aside. The critics were right.
The story was preposterous. The black iron prison too visible. 18/

The irony too pointed, the allegory too obvious.
The subtly of the original novel was lost entirely. 19/

Indeed none of us could live to see America degraded so far.

Any decent man or woman would have died on the barricades long before things ever reached this point.

/fin