The Man in the High Castle (1962)

I started this book because I watched the first season of the Amazon series and loved it, but then lost interest during the second season because the plot appeared to be taking a different direction that didn't quite make sense from the original trajectory. It made me curious about how the original story was written.

One of the primary differences between the book and the movie are that the novel is an alternate reality in which the Axis powers won WWII and everyone is reading a book (not smuggling movie reels) that is an alternate reality in which the Allies won. This was the most fascinating aspect of the story, as there are a number of conjectures on the plausibility of whether or not that state of the world (which is our own reality) was even possible and how civilization would be different in that scenario. This is an inception-like view of our current state, as well as insight into the human psyche and how we use our biases to process events in history and our place within them. The book is worth reading for this reason alone. ( )

It may have been cutting edge fiction in the sixties, but it hasn't stood the test of time. The plotting is minimal, and the characters never really come alive. ( )

An oddly written book, that I suppose falls in line with my Year of Books I Should Have Read Already, though I didn't know I should have. I watched the first season of the Amazon adaptation (more on that later), which prompted this reading. Interesting, innovative and imaginative concept...though the backdrop is incongruous. The divisions of the United States, and the political constructs, don't work (the series does it better, but ... later) with independent regions influenced, though not really occupied, by the two major Axis victors. The overall arc is presented in quite a clumsy and uneven way - such that the Hugo award is surprising. I get that much like a director of photography might shoot from an odd angle to convey to the watcher that things are off kilter, an author might invent a strange language or present "normal" concepts in an abnormal way to convey the same feeling, but Dick tries and doesn't really do that all that well. The premise is abnormal enough...Allies losing WWII... Dick tries to take it further with something in broken English like "Always faint possibility certain nervous element even in SD."

Or a thought...

There at the cash register, Mr. Childan. Polishing with cloth some artifact.

Okay...dropping articles is understandable. But he clumsily fails in having the same character think an absurd line like We cannot enter the monstrous schizophrenic morass of Nazi internecine intrigue; our minds cannot adapt.
Further, occidental characters in the Japanese controlled region think in broken English? The characters are one-dimensional and have no plausible connections/interactions with one another. I'm still scratching my virtual head and how one of the disconnected subplots is peppered with staccato discontinuities (and the other major line not exactly "peppered", but certainly "littered".)

Maybe had I read this 35 years ago, I would have liked it more. Not so much, now. I kept hoping it would get better, but he kept lapsing into inanity.

As to the adaptation...I am baffled as to how producers/writers do what they do. The setting is very roughly similar, and some of the characters have the same names, but that's about it. The television characters are essentially unrecognizable; the entire backstory equally so; and the interactions, such as they are...well, I suppose they had to be completely re-imagined as they are fundamentally unworkable as is. So, some forgiveness there. Much like Mr. Jackson's embarrassing adaptations of the Tolkien works, that series should more rightly say that it is inspired by rather than based on Dick's work. Still, ponderously slow as the series is, I think the interpretation so far better than the source. Curiously, I read that a reviewer from io9 referred to the series as an "impressive, streamlined undertaking of a fairly complicated, [...] novel."

"[F]airly complicated"? I don't think we read the same book. Or she didn't use the right adjective. "Confused novel" would be more descriptive. And of course, it had to have yet another one of those annoying "are you serious?" endings.


( )

I read the book to try to make sense of the TV series with its bewildering parallel histories. Still none the wiser - except there is no John Smith the American Opergruppenfuhrer. This is the only PKD I have read.

It is amazing to me that Dick has a loser here especially since Heinlein loved it. Anyhthing else by him is superior. ( )