The Man in the High Castle

Much like the other Philip K. Dick novels that I've read, "The Man in the High Castle" is both a product of the author's blazingly original analytic mind and his not-exactly-elegant prose style. Closer to what's called "speculative fiction" these days than any traditional science fiction, the book imagines an America that lost the Second World War. Divided by the victorious Axis powers, Americans survive as a humiliated, colonized, subaltern class. Of course, the idea that America is a successful nation both at war and at peace is so central to twentieth century American identity that I imagine that a good deal of the attraction that this novel's first readers felt to it had to do with the fact that it dared to think the unthinkable. show more Having said that, Dick does a good job of considering what "American identity" might look like if it were considered this country's past instead of its future. I was particularly taken by the interior monologues of Robert Childan, a San Francisco antiques dealer whose interactions with his Japanese clients have caused him to take up the I Ching and even to modify his own thought patterns to match his clients' imperfect English.

Dick's take on the Nazis is trickier, and not just because the novel views them at something of a distance. He doesn't minimize their evil: the alternate history he provides of a Nazi-dominated world is pretty chilling. Still, I feel that there's a kinship between a few of Dick's literary creations and the National Socialist mindset. To Dick, the Nazis represent he psychoses and psychological contradictions that he described in "A Scanner Darkly" operating on massive scale: a purposefully inhuman induced schizophrenia. In "The Man in the High Castle," Dick contrasts this with the gnomic, contemplative verses of the I Ching. It's an odd juxtaposition, one which readers with a limited amount of patience for Dick's religious or astral interests may dislike. Still, even as the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century recede into memory, the social analysis that Dick provides here is probably more illuminating than many popular analyses of the America that actually exists. show less

When Ambiguity Is the Point

Perhaps quoting from Freddie Mercury’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” best puts what many consider the finest of Philip K. Dick’s works into perspective: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” Ambiguity threads its way throughout The Man in the High Castle, because ambiguity is the whole point of the novel. Is the timeline followed by the characters in the novel reality? Or, is true reality, as Juliana comes to believe, that expressed in the alternative reality book most in the novel are reading, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? Perhaps chance dictates the path of a life or a country, and divining what’s to come means foreseeing with mystical help, as, again, most of the characters do employing I Ching show more (Book of Changes). The layering Dick accomplishes makes The Man in the High Castle a terrific reading experience, a novel guaranteed to elevate a person’s anxiety level.

The Man in the High Castle tells two alternative histories to what we accept as our reality. First is that which seems like reality to the characters and to readers. The Axis powers won WWII, they have divided the U.S. into the Pacific States of America (Japan), the Eastern States (Germany), and the Rocky Mountain buffer zone; further, Germany still seeks out Jews for extermination, and have pretty much killed everybody in Africa, as well as the Slavs. Roma, etc.; and they have an active space program, to boot. The second alternative history has the Allies winning WWII. However, the new order does not resemble the reality we known. America has resolved many of its problems, including its inherent racism. Great Britain, now both racist and expansionist, reigns as America’s rival. The Soviet Union has collapsed.

Readers experience this reality through the eyes and thoughts of the main characters: Robert Childan, owner of an American antique shop in San Francisco, who finds himself constantly kowtowing to his new masters, the Japanese; Nobusuke Tagomi, head of the Japanese trade mission, who, like many occupiers, is fascinated by American artifacts and buys from Childan; Frank Frink, whose real name is Fink, a Jew in hiding, a master artisan of fake antiques, who launches his own company; Baynes, who actually is Rudolf Wegener on a mission to reveal to the Japanese the German plans to nuke the Home Islands; and Juliana Frink, who lives in Colorado, where she hooks up with Joe Cinnadella, a Nazi assassin sent to kill Hawthorne Abendsen, author of the alternative history within this alternative history, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.

You certainly can read much into the story Dick weaves, and many have. Dick constantly asks us to ponder what is real and what isn’t. He doesn’t explicitly ask the question, but this theme runs throughout the novel. For instance, a customer complains that Childan has sold him a fake antique gun as an original. Childan discovers that his supplier is fabricating items to appear as antiques. What’s real and what isn’t, and, more perplexing, does knowing matter? On a larger scale, by the end we’re challenged to wonder which is reality, the story we have read, or the one we’ve glimpsed in excerpts and discussions of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? Have we crossed over into another reality when we follow Julianna into Abendsen’s home, which turns out to be anything but a fortress.

Then there are the issues of chance and change, the ideas the future lived by the characters was somehow ordained and immutable, much as we might believe the outcome of WWII could not have been other than it was because it is our reality. Dick has the various characters addressing these questions of reality by resorting to the I Ching for answers about the fortuity of an event, or what might await them should they take one action or another. Frank Frink, for instance, tries to determine if he should start his own business. He receives an answer that appears contradictory; in other words, ambiguous.

Finally, why does any of it matter anyway, what the characters do, what we ourselves do? Look to the book title The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. It compresses the ideas expressed in Ecclesiastes 12:5 into a short phrase, those ideas being: All things come to an end, the world we know moves on, and can become a world different from what we know.

So, fellow readers, enjoy the ambiguity that is The Man in the High Castle. show less

The Man in High Castle by Philip K. Dick is a science fiction novel that is an alternative history. The novel imagines the world as if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had won World War II some twenty years ago. In this version, Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933 and America had to go to war before they were fully recovered from the Great Depression. The Axis forces of Nazi Germany conquered most of Europe and the Soviet Union, allowing them to continue exterminating peoples of many different colors and races.

The Axis then overtook Africa while Japan conquered most of Asia. The Japanese then continued on to invade the West Coast of North America and Germany took over the Eastern half of North America. The Allies surrendered show more in 1947 and America became an occupied and divided territory. A buffer zone was left in the middle but the South is basically under Nazi control. Apparently Canada had remained independent, which was one of my quibbles with the book. Canada would be a far easier target than the United States and yet Canada and her natural resources was left alone. The story zeros in on some characters and we learn how they live in this new World. It seems that Japan is a more tolerant and softer overlord than the harsh rule of Germany. Being as these nations are so different, It came as no surprise to learn of a secret German plot to attack Japan with an atomic bomb.

The Man in High Castle felt a little dated to me. Published in 1962, it very much gives off a sixties vibe. I also thought that the author was pandering to his own sensibilities with his philosophical meanderings and the rambling story-line. I loved Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep and feel it is a much better book than this one is. It may have been timely and on the pulse in the early 60s but today it is rather stale and overrated. show less

In an alternate version of San Fransisco, change is in the air, and Americans (both Jews and non-Jews), Japanese, and Germans weigh decisions about their futures. In their world, the Axis powers won World War II, and both individual society and international relations operate in a vacuum of trust. Japan controls the U.S. West Coast and the Americans who still live there have adopted Japanese customs. Japanese and Americans alike consult the I Ching as an oracle to make decisions and foretell the immediate future. Everyone is morbidly curious about a book the Germans have banned, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an alternate history of World War II in which Germany and Japan were defeated.

The theme of free will vs determinism resonated most show more with me. The characters, with a couple of brief exceptions, have a fatalistic view of the world and of their individual lives within the larger whole. By consulting the I Ching for even the most inconsequential of decisions, they cede their free will and personal responsibility for the consequences of their choices. If you take determinism to its logical conclusion, this book would be completely implausible because it would be impossible for history to have turned out any differently than it has. show less

I really don’t know how or what to say about The Man in the High Castle, except that it truly a wonderful, richly imagined book.

The year is 1962, and the Axis won World War II. The United States is divided between Nazi puppet states on the East Coast, and Japanese occupied territory on the West Coast, with a slim buffer in between in the Rocky Mountains. The main characters go about their lives under fascism, several of them guided by the I Ching, and linked together in strange and obscure ways.

The little drip of details, the divergence between our world and Dick’s, is simply incredible. Yes, of course the British committed terrible atrocities as they were dragged down by the Reich (see Operation Vegetarian for what Churchill might show more have ordered if the war had gone differently). Sure, Nazis are colonizing Mars after draining the Mediterranean Sea and exterminating Africa. The depictions of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”, and the idealistic cynicism and internecine nihilism of the resurgent Third Reich, feel terrifyingly authentic.

The novel plays with metatextuality, as one of the key threads is the fictional novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an alternative history within the alternative history where the Allies won the war. One of my favorite bits is a mediation on historicity by a purveyor of fake Americana (the Japanese are obsessed with American artifacts). One lighter was in FDR’s pocket when he was assassinated; the other is a worthless reproduction. Is there any difference between the two? Is there aura of history that surrounds the authentic artifact? How do we know the difference between the truth and a pack of lies?

Philip K Dick is the premier paranoid author of science fiction. Everything is connected, everything you know is a lie. He was incredibly prolific (121 short stories, 44 novels), but I think this is best work. He gives the story enough time to breath, and the voice of the I Ching adds some necessary philosophical weight. show less

Well, having read the really mixed review nearly everywhere of this book and having only made it through season one of the Amazon TV series, I didn't expect to like this book very much. Wow. Was I ever wrong.This is one of the best written novels of alternate history I've ever read, and the genre is a favorite. It deftly mixes in science fiction, Eastern mysticism and quantum theory in a baffling stew of well written stories that eventually weave themselves together. Sort of. It's subtle - a banal dystopia, unquestionably evil yet totally mundane. Some found the ending lacking - for me it was an "Aha!" type of anticlimax. Read this book, especially if you found the TV adaptation trite. The book shares little with Amazon's efforts show more outside of a alternate history and a title. Five stars here easily. show less

Uma vez que o escritor postula uma realidade alternativa, daqueles "e se" que adoramos formular ao estudar história, o que fazer em seguida? Phillip K. Dick responde de modo magistral, ao incluir a temática da "história hipotética, contrafatual", na própria narrativa, com o livro "the grasshopper lies heavy", acompanhada de uma discussão profunda sobre historicidade por meio da questão sobre a relação entre significado e valor, tão importante também para o campo da arte. E isso em meio a uma intriga policial, cativante e dessa vez com personagens simpáticos. Costurando tudo isso, o I-Ching, o livro das mutações, dá um tom estranhamente realista - não há como impedir que as culturas se misturem, afinal, nem em um mundo show more majoritariamente nazista. De toda forma, ao término, fico com a impressão que a sorte e o destino de fato se confundem.

Vencedor do prêmio Hugo de 1963 para melhor novela. show less