Moorish Castle started from Gibraltar in 711 and, through to its final recapture by Spaniards in 1462, Moorish rule was gradually undermined until, with the fall of Granada in 1492, Moorish occupation of parts of western Europe came to an end after 781 years. The Moorish conquest of Spain was led by Tarik ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr, who may have landed in Europe at or near Gibraltar. Gibraltar thus became the stepping-stone to the Moorish conquests of most of Spain and part of France. This spectacular feat of arms took a mere twenty-one years, no mean task considering the distances
The Man in the High Castle progressed little, because he was too disturbed by his original research for "The Man in the High Castle" and could not mentally bear "to go back and read about Nazis again." He suggested that the sequel would be a collaboration with another author:Somebody would have to come in and help me do a sequel to it. Someone who had the stomach for the stamina to think along those lines, to get into the head; if you're going to start writing about Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, you have to get into his face. Can you imagine getting into Reinhard Heydrich's face?