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The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle

List Price: $12.00
Your Price: $9.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Where is the Story?
Review: Granted, Philip K. Dick fans will love this book no matter what. And it's aclaimed by others, but if you are looking for a STORY.... well you are in for a disapointment. It has a resonance, a feel that is dark and impressive, but there is no story. How can this be a classic for some people? Obviously it's 'feel' is so strong, that people love to return to it over and over again. But it lacks true writer's 'craft'. It has no structure, and you will want to throw the book against the wall when you finish. I just love some of Dick's stuff, but if you looking for a story, this isn't it. Atmosphere? Yes. Story? No.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Work of Rare Brilliance
Review: How does one even begin to describe this amazing book? As others have pointed out, there is little in the novel by way of plot or action, and I would also add that as a literary stylist P.K. Dick was no Marcel Proust. The ending of the book is deeply flawed, in my opinion, and gives one the impression that P.K. Dick simply ran out of steam and didn't quite know how to end the story.

...And yet...and yet..."The Man in the High Castle" remains a work of rare genius, despite all of the flaws within it. Very rarely does one came across a book so thought provoking, so moving, so well endowed with insight into the natures of men. P.K. Dick might as well have been writing a critique of the America or the Soviet Union of his own day, for all the insight he brought to bear in this alternative history.

Dick's description of life as a citizen of an occupied country rings with an accuracy that is usually possible only for one who has experienced the humiliation of subjection oneself. Robert Childan might as well have been an African-American or an Indian living under the Raj, and his feelings towards himself and his masters would have been little different. If the America of the present day or the India of the British colonial era hardly seem the moral equivalent of what life might have been like under the Japanese, it is only because those whose tales are told are the conquerors', not because of any moral superiority inherent in Anglo-Saxon life.

Dick's gives an indication of how many Japanese of the WWII generation must feel about the United States' post-war occupation and its eternally self-serving justifications of its own actions. If the Co-Prosperity Sphere was a sham, what are we to make of America's occupation of the Phillipines after that country's war of independence from Spain? How to reconcile America's support for the French colonial presence in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s with its avowed mission to halt Japanese colonial expansion in the late 1930s? What can explain away American support for Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Fidel Marcos and countless other unsavory, thieving butchers the world over? Could it be - Heaven forbid! - that for all the brutality of the Japanese' campaigns in East Asia, we have been every bit as immoral as they were? "The Man in the High Castle" dares to say "Perhaps so," and it is for this heretical notion that it deserves a 5-star rating and more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Slip into another , darker Earth
Review: A fantastic book! I've read it over twenty times and never tire of it. It's uniqueness is it's 'casual everyday' aspect to the characters...marvelous!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I don't get it.
Review: I agree with many of the other reviewers that the set up of the book is nice. Japan occupies the Western USA while Germany occupies the East, and seemingly has some not-well-defined power over the West as well (e.g. Jews found living in the West are arrested and transported to German territory). White Americans are bitter and/or try to get along with their conquerers the best they can. Black Americans are re-enslaved (but that takes up maybe 0.1% of the book).

The characters are interesting as well. So is the existence in this alternate universe of a book of alternate history, in which the Allies win the war. Also interesting is when Fuehrer Bormann dies and the world anxiously awaits who will succeed him: Goebbels or Heynrich?

Unfortunately, Dick takes this great set up and blows it badly. The characters spend tremendous amounts of time doing I Ching and explaining the nonsensical results which, like all fortune telling, can mean anything anybody wants it to mean. The book is bogged down in New Age, fake Eastern mysticism. Well, I guess for all I know it is authentic Eastern mysticism, but it does nothing for my Western mind. And really, the great set up seems only designed to let Dick give us pointless Chinese poetry and superstition. I guess this was ground-breaking stuff back in 1962, but is boring today. Might I suggest Xenocide by Orson Scott Card as an example of Chinese mysticism with a point.

I might have given the book three stars but for the silly non-ending. The ending is as inscruable as all the deep and meaningless poetry that fills the book. The ending is perhaps supposed to be a Zen koan. Blech.

If you want to read "groundbreaking," somewhat science fictionish, alternate historyish stuff from the same time period that holds up well today, I suggest Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. That book also contains nonsensical mysticism and poetry, but the difference is that in Cat's Cradle, the mysticism is fake and everyone knows it and no one takes it seriously.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Definitely not for everyone
Review: Philip K. Dick is not, unfortunately, for everyone. What concerns him as an author are not the things which concern most people: questions on the nature of reality, on what makes us human, on how people deal with a universe which feels, fundamentally, wrong. In this book many of the characters feel like they are living in the wrong universe and at the wrong time -- they live in Japanese-controlled California in a universe where the Axis has won World War II. How they react when they learn of a book, itself an alternative history, supposedly based on the I Ching, where the Allies win WWII, and how that fact changes their lives is the focus of this book. No, aside for the death of one individual, not much happens, on the surface. This book isn't about history, per se, it's about people. Highly recommended.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I don't usually feel this dense, but.......
Review: Consider myself to be at least of average intelligence, but what was with that ending? Is he talking about the physical reality or the psychological? I actually read this book first when I was in grade school...didn't get a lot out of it then but remembered for over 20 years the ending and how I didn't uderstand it. Saw the book in the store the other day and said "I'll try again"....got more of the book's subtext....but you know my feeling on the ending.....still. Gave it three stars because I actually thought it was an interesting read. Good charicterizations and interplay between the seperate (yet joint) story lines. I agree with a previous reviewer that the description of Tagomi's breakdown was incredible.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quiet Classic
Review: If you're looking for an alternative history fable filled with dramatic action, heroic characters, and definitive conclusions, this is not your book. Dick's characters are ordinary people living mundane lives in a world that we can recognize with certain peculiar differences. Yet the journey they all make towards an awareness of what life might have been and could yet still be is all the more compelling. It's strange that all those "exciting" books are usually worth only one reading. This book is worth quite a bit more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the first and best alternate histories
Review: I used to give away copies of this book until it went out of print and became difficult to find. It's one of the few alternate histories that is worth rereading, and which becomes richer with each reading. The casual reader looking for a quick entertainment fix may be disappointed. PK Dick was constantly pushing the barriers of reality; some of his novels seem barely sane. Of course, that's because he regarded "reality" as something of a shared mass hallucination, an idea which has become far more comprehensible today than it was in the 1960s. Here he addresses that theme to some extent, but also addresses another theme: what really determines the course of history? His answer is not immediately apparent. Without giving anything away, it should be stated that the I Ching, and the philosophy behind it as a means of divination is integral to the plot and to Dick's conclusion. There are any number of novels which explore the question of "What would have happened if X had died, or the Battle of Y had been lost". This one explores the meaning of chance, culture and history, and the problem of evil and gives a surprisingly optimistic answer from an author known for pessimism.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: "What if" this novel had a better ending?
Review: Normally a fan of "alternate history" stories, I found "The Man in the High Castle" disappointing. Although Dick creates a tangible and believable backdrop, he squanders it in a meandering mess.

The promising premise introduced never comes to fruition. These characters go about their daily lives, and we follow them, but aside from displaying unique cirsumstances, this novel has very little plot.

I also found Dick's obsession with the occult (particularly foretune-telling) annoying, as well as out of place. At times, I could not be sure if this was a novel or a new age treatise on the I-Ching.

Let's not even get into the problems with this version of history that Dick flat out ignores, such as the fact that it would be next to impossible for any occupation force to successfully hold North America.

Add to all of that an ending that really isn't an ending at all, and you're left to wonder just how sparse the field was when this work won the Hugo award.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: "What if" this novel had an ending?
Review: As alternate history goes, "The Man in the High Castle" starts off strong, but meanders it's way to a forgetable, unfulfilling conclusion.

I had heard such high praise of this work, I could barely believe I was reading the right novel. Dick draws a wonderful picture of his alternate world at the beginning of the novel, but then does very little with it.

And for a Science Fiction novel to lend such weight to occult practices (i.e. fortune-telling) is almost an insult to the genre. I thought at times I was reading a New Age treatise on the I-Ching.

And all of this doesn't even take into account the lackluster, anti-climactic ending, which leaves the reader in a state of general disinterest.


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