HIGH CASTLE Soaring
The new Amazon series, The Man in the High Castle began streaming last week and is bringing people to the Philip K. Dick novel on which it is based. The trade paperback edition debuted at #13 on the NYT‘s list and is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, now at #34.
Coverage, as we have been reporting (here, here, and here), is both plentiful and favorable, powering the book’s rise along with heavy promotion by Amazon.
Holds are also strong, spiking to 8:1 in some locations. Resourceful readers are even seeking out the Library America edition containing The Man in the High Castle along with three other Dick novels.
To feed the demand, a tie-in edition (HMH/Mariner Books; OverDrive Sample) just arrived with cover art that evokes the dystopian alternate reality of the series.
Once readers get their hands on the book they will find, as Laura Miller, Slate’s books and culture columnist, writes, a story very different than the one currently streaming on Amazon.
“the new TV series is so alien to the book in spirit that it would be a shame if it came to supplant our understanding of what is also one of the best mid-20th-century American novels about colonialism and its corrosive effects on the human psyche.”
On a side note, the PR for the show is gathering its own attention.
NPR’s The Two-Way reports that the New York Metro Transportation Authority has removed Nazi-themed subway advertisements for the show at the request of Governor Andrew Cuomo.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined the call as well, saying the images are “irresponsible and offensive to World War II and Holocaust survivors, their families, and countless other New Yorkers.” (NPR has images of the subway cars as part of their story).
A second trailer captures the alternate reality and the moody feel of the show: