Alternate History from the 1960s…
Process and Review
This week’s podcast contains a review of The Man in the High Castle by Phillip Kindred Dick. We’re talking about the book here, not the series on Amazon. The series was fun, and is fodder for a number of discussions, so look for that in the future. The Man in the High Castle is a well-written Alternate History story, and earned Dick a Hugo Award in 1962. The genre has come a long way since then, and it would have been interesting to see what Dick would have done with his universe, had he continued and wrote one or more sequels  over time.
We follow the pattern for this podcast series by starting with some process talk. This tends to be rambling/stream-of-conscious talk, so I hope I don’t drive y’all crazy. If nothing else, talking out what the heck I’m doing helps me. This week, it’s a ramble about shifting gears. Just today, for example, it took Lady Editor to reel me in. I have an idea to do an anthology for Elysian Fields Press, and fortunately for me, Dara looks at her editing schedule to keep me on track. It does look like an antho that would drop over next summer, with Dragons2 dropping in the Spring and Talents2 in the fall, might actually work.
The big thing process-wise now is the notion of what happens when the project with the closer deadline produces a bit of writers’ block. Is it OK to shift gears? Is doing any writing better than doing nothing? It’s essentially the process that started the ball rolling on Hidden Talents. I would need a break from the history stuff for the Arcadia books, so I’d go back to thinking about Ren, JJ, and Mike. It worked; as the fiction flowed, it was easy to return to the nonfiction. But there you go, I’m rambling here. Go listen!
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