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Summary: Dick's Tale of an Axis-Occupied America
Review: 'The Man in the High Castle' is a wonderful, terror filled novel of what the world would have been like had the allies lost World War Two. In the novel the Nazis control the US from the east coast to about the Rocky Mountians while Japan holds California, Oregon, and Washington. What's left in the middle is what's left of the United States. The plot centers around a Nazi high official's visit to his Japanese opposite number in San Fransico. The nature of this visit could determine the fate of North America, and the rest of the World. Along the way Dick gives us plenty of food for thought: A Japanese obsession with the old west, A power struggle between Josef Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich, A civilisation that embraces the 'I, Ching,' instead of the Bible, and the lengths that a Jew must go to simply to stay alive in a world where to be different is the greatest crime. The book was written in the early sixties and contains a few too many science-fictiony ideas: the Mediteranean Sea drained and used as farmland, moonbases and advanced spaceflight. Although you must blink your eyes at these few distractions, the book is a lot of fun and makes wonder just what life would have been like in an American Reich.
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Summary: A complex book that defies labels!
Review: OK, first let's get one thing out of the way - this is a great book, and it's absolutely irrelevant if you label it "science fiction," "alternative history," or whatever. Except for the purposes of book marketing, who cares anyway? The bottom line is that Philip K. Dick was too complex and intelligent a man for his work to be pinned down into any one genre. And who would want it to be?!? On one level, or course, "The Man in the High Castle" is - at least on the surface and on the jacket cover - about an alternative time line in which America loses World War II (with the Nazis taking over East of the Mississippi, the Japanese West of the Rockies, and the middle being a kind of backwater/no-man's land). But what is this book really about? My conclusion after reading the book, as well as many of the reviews here and out there on the web, as well as some stuff about Philip K. Dick, as well as talking to a really smart friend of mine who has read the book many times, is that this book is about several main themes, and can be read on several different levels (as most great works of fiction can be). Thus, in my opinion "The Man in the High Castle" is about, among other things (in no particular order): 1) the lives of Americans under Japanese occupation; 2) the lives of the Japanese occupiers, and especially their interaction with various Americans - white, black, Jewish; 3) the Japanese-German relationship, and the difference in Japanese and German culture; 4) what is the nature of "reality"?; 5) what is "authentic" and what is "fake"?; 6) what constitutes a moral life?; 7) culture and national identity; 8) how does one remain true to one's self/ideals, especially when it isn't easy to do so; 9) what is sane and what is crazy, especially in a highly confusing world without clear black-and-white moral choices (in other words, OUR world!)?; 10) the concept that there is some fascist within all of us, and how easy it is for fascism to settle in comfortably to "middle America"; 11) the place of the artist, artistic freedom, and artistic courage; 12) the connection between art and the "real world"; and 13) a relatively deterministic (i.e., Hegelian, the I Ching) view of the way history works (in which humans are essentially pawns) vs. one in which things are NOT preordained and in which actions (or lack thereof) by individuals can play huge roles. Whew! That's more to think about in one book than you'll get in several books of popular fiction put together! The bottom line: Philip K. Dick is a genius, and this is possibly his greatest book (although another one of his books is better known because it was made into the movie "Blade Runner"). Read it now...you won't soon forget it! (PS The complaints about the ending not tying things up neatly totally miss the point of the book - see #4, #5, #8, #11, and #12 above!).
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Summary: A literary Classic
Review: This is an well written novel with real charachters. It should be studied by schools everywhere. Like most people, I expected the novel to be quite different than it was. I can't grasp the meaning myself so I cannot appreciate the book entirely but maybe the novel and the ending is meant to be ambiguous.
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Summary: This should be required high school reading....
Review: Science fiction writing - for those who think it's just make-believe fantasy - allows us to explore current issues from the safe light of afar - ('cause it's just make-believe fantasy, right?) While reading, we can make comparisons of modern racism or genocides with fictionalized aliens, and so on.... In this book, there are no aliens from outer space. This is an alternate view of our own history and other social issues in the days of Nazi Germany. The anonymous reviewer ("Things are Not as They Seem") has the BEST words on this book - read his/her review and then buy the book, if you haven't! Here's my story - my first husband brought this book to me in 1968, as I lay in a hospital bed after the birth of our son. That's my kind of guy (though I didn't know it then!) We were barely out of our teen years, right in the midst of some major changes in the US. Fresh out of high school, I hadn't bothered to think through much, and had grown up accepting the US's Number One Hero position in the world. This book was fascinating, not just a sci fi escape, but a book that raised questions in my very young mind, questions I wouldn't have gone to on my own. What would our lives have been like if the Axis had won the war? The book is good for the liberal-minded, though the ending is...well - you need to read it yourself. And it needs to be read and then discussed, in order to challenge that cocky belief we hold to be true, (a slightly masked form of global racism), that we are the chosen country. It is time for someone to write on this theme again, but for now, this is a good read. If you liked Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," or if the short story "The Lottery" got you thinking, you will enjoy reading this book.
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Summary: Dick's Masterpiece
Review: The Man in the High Castle is Dick's masterpiece. Along with VALIS and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it completes the trilogy of the author's essential works. A must read for Dickheads or for anyone who considers himself a serious fan of science fiction. Dick was clearly influenced by two earlier works of alternative history, Sarban's The Sound of His Horn and C. M. Kornbluth's "Two Dooms". In turn, The Man in the High Castle has influenced any number of later works, not just Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream and the novels of Harry Turtledove, but Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven as well. This is a very complex, suspenseful novel, consisting of four main plot lines and a host of characters whose lives sometimes interact. Don't expect any slam-bang pyrotechnic action here, despite the novel's provocative premise. It's more a slice of life tale, showing that even after a catastrophic defeat, life in America would go on. Dick is very good at detailing the nuances of life in Axis-ruled America. For example, at one point as an aside, it is pointed out that after the Nazi pograms, the only surviving prewar comedian is Bob Hope, and even he has to broadcast out of Canada. Also, an unintended irony for a novel written in 1962 is Dick's conjecture that if the United States had lost WWII, we would all be listening to Japanese audio equipment and driving German cars now. The author achieves the near impossible feat of actually being even-handed towards the Nazis without glamorizing them. He describes them at one point as Neanderthals in white lab coats, technological geniuses who have drained the Mediterranean and are conquering the Solar System, yet are morally bankrupt. Dick is much easier on the Japanese, depicting them not just as benign conquerors, but almost like a group of tourists, just off the latest JAL flight headed for the souvenir stand at Disneyland. Only in one brief instance when Juliana Frink reminiscences about conditions in San Francisco immediately after the occupation is their wartime rapacity even hinted at. Several other reviewers here appear to be put off that the novel didn't live up to the action and dramatic tension hinted at in the synopsis above or the 1964 Popular Library cover with its map of the United States superimposed by Nazi and Imperial Japanese flags. When I first read it back in 1964 at age fourteen, I felt much the same way. On rereading it in 1988, however, I saw it for its true worth, an existential novel of the first order (ranking with the best of Camus or Sartre). It represents the fullest flowering of Dick's most consistent theme: What is reality? The provocative setting of an alternative universe where the Axis has won World War II and now occupies a defeated and humiliated America is merely a sensational back drop for Dick's real theme: how can we be sure of what is real? Thus the seemingly minor scene involving two Zippo lighters is actually the key to understanding the whole novel. One is merely a minor collectible, the other is priceless, Mr. Wyndam-Matson tells his mistress. What's the difference? The one was the actual lighter FDR was carrying when he was assassinated in 1934. But how does he know it is real? Well, he has a paper that certifies it is. But how does he know the paper is real? And so on. Likewise, the emphasis on the Japanese obsession with collecting authentic relics of America's prewar past is a symbolic of the authenticity which all the novel's characters are seeking in their own diverse ways. The anticlimactic and ambiguous ending also only serves to re-enforce what Dick was trying to say. In retrospect, he couldn't have ended it any other way. To neatly wrap things up would only subvert the novel's whole premise.
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Summary: Dick should be a Grand Master of SF
Review: First off, I would just like to comment that I have never really liked the fact that SFWA requires that a writer be alive in order to be given the title "Grand Master". Philip K. Dick died in 1982, and was a realitivly young 54 at the time of his death. They almost didn't quiet make it in time to give the Grand Master award to Alfred Bester. They didn't make it in time for Dick, like Theodore Sturgeron, Henry Kuttner and John W. Campbell, as well as others. Phil Dick should be should be made a Grand Master of Science Fiction postumously. The Novels and Short Stories that Dick produced in his lifetime are some of the best SF ever written. The Man in the High Castle is not your average SF novel. In some ways, it isn't an SF novel. It is set in an alternative history, which is about all that makes it SF except for the way it tells the story. If it was not written by "an SF author" it probably would not be considered SF by most people . But it is SF cause it deals with large ideas that most other literature wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll. Basically, it deals with a concept of what the future holds of humanity. The world it is set in is very alien to us. Nazi's -- pretty much nothing more than evil space aliens. Of course, evil space aliens that we are all too familure with. (Lets hope they remain nothing more than evil space aliens of literuture too. Once was one too many times for us as a species to play around with things like Nazism.) In the end, the story line kind of just ends. It ends with a esoteric view on things in the book. A world where Nazi's and Japanese are competing in a Cold War that threats to flame into a hot war at any moment. Which all just acts as a backdrop... Ideas, the stuff of SF. Nazi's and Japanese Facists in control of the United States and most of the world... and it isn't even the point of it all. The novel is more about people trying to make their way in this world... and some how we might just make it through a lot of hash odds and make it all work out in the end. The novel has a very cautious, but in the end, extreamly optimistic view of the human race and what the future holds for us. The novel, like our real lives, does not tell us what that future holds... just that if we play our cards right it can be a better place. Philip K. Dick holds a unique vision of the world we live in. It might be bad, but even in the pits of hell a seed can take root that changes everything.
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Summary: Excellent book that creeps up on you intellectually...
Review: This is not a book that can be classified as casual reading, atleast not the first time it is read. Dick ponders the question of "what if?" throughout the book in almost a Pulp Fiction like manner, never having one main character. Dick's knowledge of the inner workings of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan add to the books realism. For anyone interested in speculative fiction and WW II, this is the book. I don't know why people have a problem with the ending, because if anyone has read his other books it shouldn't be a big surprise or dissapointment. My only wish is that is was longer.
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Summary: Transcends its genre.
Review: Philip K. Dick, as some reading this might be aware, was a science fiction writer whose stories served (loosely) as the basis for the films "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall." His short fiction exemplifies the maxim that science fiction is a "literature of ideas." The "idea" behind "The Man in the High Castle" is that of the alternative history: the Axis powers actually prevailed in World War II, and modern-day America (meaning, in this case, the 1960's, when the book was first published) has been roughly split into two spheres of influence, German and Japanese. How pleasantly surprising, then, to discover that this central "idea" is nothing more than a backdrop; that while plot and characters are certainly shaped by the imagined circumstances, the actual concern of the book is not the situation but the people within it. As a result, rather than reading as a description of an alternate reality, we are treated to a full experience of lives in a world that differs profoundly from our own. As a result, this novel is more than just science fiction. It succeeds in transcending the genre ghetto and meriting consideration among the best of modern writing. Examples of how carefully, and how well, this book was thought out are too numerous to list, but one example: the titular "Man" is an American maverick writer of an alternative history in which America and its allies prevail in World War II. How simple, how convenient it would have been to have this alternative-history-within-an-alternative-history perfectly reflect our own reality. But it isn't so; the imagined history is completely different. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this is a truly rewarding book.
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Summary: Where's the story?
Review: Although the author lays the foundation for a skyscraper, developing the characters and their environment in this "Japan and Germany won the war" alternative history, in the end, I was left wondering why the building collapsed halfway through construction. Half a book deserving half a Hugo.
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Summary: A Warning From Alternative History
Review: It is easy to see why so many readers have a probelem with the ending of this book. I, too, found it rather unsatisfactory. The dillema with conceiving such a story is that there perhaps can be no satisfactory end. The meagre handful of frightened and unorganised disenters left under German and Japanese co-rule could not plausibly have risen up and struck back. So the ending we are ofered is somewhat ambiguous. It reflects the hopes of the individuals under oppression. Individual psychosis. Unfortunately, and darkly, the note is not bright. The sinistry of the preceeding events, the situation that continues to escalate beyond the final page, clouds any hope for change. However, the striking inversion of one of history's most pivotal periods offers much to contemplate, and the display of the characters' unspoken racism is so subtle, it would seem, to themselves, but to us the readers... so tragic. In this, there is little hope. A great rot is infecting the human race in this world. There is surely the question: what of the evil in world war do we inherit in our world. But Dick convinces us that the way things could have turned out would have been infinitely worse. I have not come across anything quite like this before, and it has fuelled my urge to read more of Dick's work. The Man In The High Castle also works as companion to Radio Free Albemuth, in that a similar scenario occurs. (Don't expect much of a soul-satisfying ending in that one either).
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