Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War and now, in the late 1980s, the Japanese Empire rules over the western US states, their power assured by technological superiority.
Americans now worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan’s conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons – a shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest subversive tactic is to distribute an illegal video game that asks players to imagine what the world might be like if the United States had won the war instead.
Captain Beniko Ishimura’s job is to censor video games, and he’s working with Agent Akiko Tsukino of the secret police to get to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura’s hiding something… He’s slowly been discovering that the case of the George Washingtons is more complicated than it seems, and the subversive videogame’s origins are even more controversial and dangerous than either of them originally suspected.
Part detective story, part brutal alternate history, United States of Japan is a stunning successor to Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
What Others Are Saying
“A searing vision of the persistence of hope in the face of brutality, United States of Japan is utterly brilliant.”
– Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy winner and author of The Grace of Kings
“A really intriguing book, one that jumps nicely off of the coattails of Philip K Dick and instead of simply copying what had come before, has ventured out and created something wholly new, interesting and exciting to read.”
– io9
“A hell of a ride.”
– Lightspeed Magazine