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 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 tasked with getting 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 the censors originally suspected. Fiction, by its very definition, is essentially geared toward answering the question “what if?” Alternate history particularly delights in positing this conundrum. As soon as I read the blurb for United States of Japan, I knew that I had to read it. I’m willing to admit the giant robot on the cover also helped to sell me on the premise. An alternative version of 1980s America where Japan and Germany defeated...