World War II has been over for 17 years. America has been divided between the Nazis and the Japanese. In the neutral buffer zone that divides the two lives the man in the high castle, the author of a work of fiction that offers an alternative theory of world history in which the Axis powers lost the war.

The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. Even Spofforth - the most perfect machine ever created - cannot bear the oppressive existence. But hope lies in the form of a man and a woman who find passion and joy in love and in books.

John Wainwright is a freak, a human mutation with an extraordinary intelligence which is both awesome and frightening to behold. Ordinary humans are mere playthings to him. And Odd John has a plan - to create a new order on Earth, a new supernormal species. But the world is not ready for such a change.

When black-cloaked Sarah Canary wanders into a labour camp in the Washington territories in 1873, Chin Ah Kin is ordered by his uncle to escort 'the ugliest woman he could imagine' away. But Chin soon becomes the follower. In the first of many such instances, they are separated, both resurfacing some days later at an asylum for the insane. Chin has run afoul of the law and Sarah has been committed for observation. Their escape from the asylum in the...