jeremy snyder’s meta|remix

i’m on a bit of a philip k. dick streak lately. i may even pick up one or two more after these, but i just finished reading “the man in the high castle“

the book itself was really enjoyable to read, despite how gloomy the situation described was. but what i really liked most was actually the mechanism used for creating the scenario. what i mean by that is this concept of remixing the past. the book itself was originally published in 1962, as far as i know. but in any event, by the time it was published, world war II was obviously over, and the outcome was known. i like that philip k. dick took an event, asked the question of what would have happened if things had gone differently, and then imagined a future around it. the reason i liked this construct so much is that i’m currently writing something of my own. i’m going in a little bit different direction, remixing the immediate future, the next 2-5 years or so. for that reason, i also found this book helpful in thinking about how to address a few issues in my fictional future. and thank goodness this was a work of fiction.