United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas
“United States of Japan is a powerful book, unsettling at times – surreal and hypnotic. There’s a bit of Philip K. Dick in here, and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but Peter Tieryas is his own voice, a talented author, somebody to keep an eye on for sure. I loved his last book, bald New World, and I loved this one, too.” Richard Thomas, author of Breaker and Disintegration
“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
Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans 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 group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest terrorist 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 tasked with getting to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura’s hiding something…kind of. 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 the censors originally suspected.
File Under: Science Fiction