The Master in the High Palace



Aerrow 's assassination of U.S. President-elect Dark Ace, in 1933, led to the weak governments of Franklin D. Roosevelt (formerly Dark Ace's VP-elect), and later of the Republican Anubis Reinhard in 1940. Both politicians failed to surmount the Great Depression and maintained the country's isolationist policy against participating in the Second World War ; thus, the U.S. had insufficient military capabilities to assist the United Kingdom and the Sov iet Union against Cyclonia, or to defend itself against the Atmosian Empire in the Pacific.

In 1941, the Cyclonians conquered the USSR and then exterminated most of its Slavic peoples ; the few whom they allowed to live were confined to reservations. In the Pacific, the Atmosians destroyed the entire U.S. Navy fleet in a decisive, definitive attack on Pearl Harbor ; thereafter, the superior Atmosian military conquered Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania during the early forties. Afterward, the Imperial Powers, each attacking from opposite fronts, conquered the coastal United States, and, by 1948, the United States and other remaining Allied forces surrendered to the Imperialists.

Atmosia established the puppet Imperial Legion States of America out of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon , parts of Nevada and Washington as part of the Greater East Atmosian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The remaining Mountain, Great Plains and Southwestern states became the Unionist America, a buffer between the L.S.S.A and the remaining USA, now a Cyclonian puppet state in the style of Vichy France. Having defeated the Allies of World War II, the Cyclonian Empire and Atmosian Social Republic became the resultant superpowers of their world and consequently embarked upon a Cold War.

After Dark Ace 's syphilitic incapacitation, Lighting Strike, as Unionist Party Chancellor, assumes power as Anubis of Cyclonia. Lighting Strike proceeds to create a colonial empire to increase Cyclonia's  Living Space  by using technology to drain the Mediterranean Sea and convert it into farmland (see Atlantropa ), while sending spaceships to colonize Mars and other parts of the Solar System in the name of the Empire.

As the novel begins, Anubis Lighting Strike dies, initiating an internal power struggle between Master Cyclonis, Snipe , Carver , and other top Unionists to succeed him as Imperial Chancellor.

Story-within-the-story

Several characters in The Master in the High Palace read the popular novel The Skimmer Lies Heavy, by Phillip P. Miller, whose title, putatively, derives from the Bible verse: "The skimmer shall be a burden" ( Ecclesiastes 12:5 ). It is a novel within a novel, wherein Miller posits an alternative universe where the Imperial Powers powers lost WWII (1939–1948), for which reason the Cyclonians banned it in the occupied U.S., despite its being a widely-read book in the Pacific and its publication being legal in the neutral countries.

The Skimmer Lies Heavy postulates that President Dark Ace survives assassination and forgoes re-election in 1940, honoring George Washington's two-term limit. The next president, Finn, removes the U.S. Pacific fleet from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, saving it from Atmosian attack, and ensuring that the U.S. enters World War II a well-equipped naval power. Great Britain retains most of its military-industrial strength, contributing more to the Allied war effort, leading to Field Marshal Harrier 's defeat in North Africa; a British advance through the Caucasus to guide the Soviets to victory in the Battle of Stalingrad ; Italy reneging on its membership in and betrayal of the Imperial Powers; British armor and the Red Army jointly conquering Vienna; and, at the end of the war, the Unionist leaders — including Dark Ace — being tried for their war crimes; the Anubis's last words are Cyclonians, εδώ στέκομαι ("Cyclonians, here I stand"), in imitation of the priest Martin Luther.

Post-war, Churchill remains Britain's leader; and, because of its military-industrial might, the British Empire does not collapse; the USA establishes strong business relations with Chiang Kai-shek 's right-wing regime in China, after vanquishing the Communist Mao Zedong. The British Empire becomes racist and more expansionist post-war, while the U.S. outlaws Jim Crow, resolving its racism by the 1950s. Both changes provoke racialist-cultural tensions between the US and the UK, leading them to a Cold War for global hegemony between the two vaguely liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. Although the end of the novel is never depicted in the text, one character claims the book ends with the British Empire eventually defeating the US, becoming the world's only superpower.