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Summary: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy
Review: Philip K. Dick's masterpiece is one of the classics of the alternative history genre. This was my first Philip K.Dick novel and it's so good that I want to light up a Land-o-Smiles and read everything he's ever written. The characters seem like real people. The story is told through interleaved overlapping stories that revolve around the Nazi and Japanese domination of America after America and the British lost WWII in 1947. It's 1962 and the United States has been divided between the Nazis in the East and the Japanese in the West. America has become a third world country controlled and exploited by the victors. The Japanese are better masters than the Germans. The Germans have turned their part of the world into a living nightmare and are plotting to start a war with the Japanese. The Japanese are quiet and philosophical. The scenes of life in Japanese dominated San Francisco are oddly familiar. Dick has transposed the usual circumstance a visiting American finds in third world countries friendly to the United States: Wealthy foreigners living in exclusive enclaves, fawning local businessmen eager to get the foreign visitor's business, local police dominated and loosely controlled by the foreigners. The I Ching is central to the story, guiding the action of many of the protagonists. In all an imaginative take on what life could have been like, uniquely flavored by the influence of Eastern Philosophy.
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Summary: Philip K. Dick at his mind-bending best
Review: When Borges writes mind-bending stories with ideas playing off of each other never concluding but offering up tension for the readers, he is a deep writer. When Philip K. Dick does the same with novels, he's a genre writer. With novels like this one, Dick proves the fallacy of the science fiction ghetto. America has lost World War II. The Japanese are in the West while the Nazis control the East Coast. Jews are secretly going about plotting the destruction of this system, while slavery is once again in fashion. Marijuana is legal and sold on the street corner and the Japanese still buy American pop culture trinkets with a missionary zeal. Meanwhile a man has written a book in which America won the War in an "alternate history" where FDR wasn't assassinated in 1936, Italy turned against Germany and Hitler committed suicide. So disturbing is this book ot the Germans that they are sending assassins to him. Meanwhile the I Ching is giving readings that are startlingly accurate and yet the people don't know it. No one is what they seem and the puzzle of existence and identity is played with with glee. The only warning I give when reading this book is that like most Philip K. Dick books, most of the resolution happens 50 pages before the last page and what wasn't resolved by then won't be resolved and you are left wondering where the ending is supposed to be. It's a hazard of reading most Philip K. Dick books, but in this case it's worth it
Rating: 
Summary: Looking Back On It,Years Later.
Review: I have read this book perhaps two or thre times,and recall being hugely impressed when I first read it.I re-read it,along with a lot of other P.K.D books,many years later,and didn't find it as enthralling.I think that it is a flawed masterpiece,and agree with many of the criticisms made by other reviewers (weak conclusion;flat characters,etc.).However,all of the reviewers who didn't like it have written well-thought out criticisms;except two of them.One of the reviewers is remarkable in the staggeringly bad standard of his writing:grammar,synatax,etc.The one I am referring to, arrogantly states that readers want to be entertained,rather than have their minds expanded.Where is this engraved in stone?I have some advice for this person:don't attempt anything written by either Nabokov or Jorge Luis Borges.Ursula Le Guinn compared P.K.D with the latter.Both were novelists of ideas,and didn't really put much effort into "rounded" characters.
I believe that the book is going to be adapted for the big screen,as most of P.K.D's books will eventually be.If his mind had been more focussed,"The Man In The High Castle" would have been great.The angry reviewer has a problem (and cannot even spell) college professors.He also urges us to read a biography by some who "made this country." Does he have any suggestions? Innumerable,anonymous immigrants did all of that.I don't think that they had time to write a gripping biography.
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Summary: Essential, archetypical Alternative History, but...
Review: As one of the first major Alternative History books (I believe) this book is well worth a read. It's unsettling in many ways, and focuses on the day-to-day life of an Occupied America. You get a sense for the big picture from the asides, rather than an explanation of "this is how we lost the war" or big scenes with the Japanese invading LA, the Germans landing in Brooklyn, etc..
Trailblazer though it be, it's not as good as the many "A.H." books that came in its wake, particularly the works of Harry Turtledove. My opinion of this book remains essentially the same as when I first read it:
Great Setup. No Action. Somewhat bewildering Conclusion.
Look, Mr. Dick's skills are beyond criticism. It's definitely a modern classic, and a must read. However my problem with it ~as a read in and of itself~ lies in the fact that the world of the book and its characters, seemed so, well, shallow. So much is implied rather than explored. The utter heartbreak and misery of an America occupied by the Axis seems too understated.
Is it possible that Mr. Dick simply didn't imagine how bad an occupation by the Axis would have truly been? I wonder. American values and lifestyle would not have been just altered, but would have simply.... ceased. In the book there is just too much of a sense that if the Allies had lost, the day to day life in the USA wouldn't have changed much. That "we'd get along" and accommodate the new circumstances.
I'm not so sure... BUT, read the book anyway. Just understand that you may find that its "one of the first" rather than the "one of the best."
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Summary: Lives are touched by a grand sweep of history and vice versa
Review: Dick's classic alternate history novel describes a world where FDR's premature demise allows the Axis powers to win World War II. Most of the action takes place in the Pacific States of America - the section of the former USA now administered by Japan. The world has been much transformed by fascism; Africa has suffered an unprecedented holocaust, the Mediterranean has been drained, and the former USA has been split into three different partitions - German in the east, Japanese in the far west, and a central region that is still free. Given this ambitious backdrop, Dick chooses to tell a very small story, following just a few characters through the events of just a few weeks. When the story opens Americans have been pretty thoroughly cowed. The animosity that characterized the early years of reconstruction has given way to an acceptance, a recognition that life goes on despite the changes imposed from abroad. Frank Frink and his estranged wife Juliana are ordinary working people, skilled laborers, struggling just to get along in a world where they are effectively second-class citizens. A Mr. Childan deals in antique American artifacts, selling America's heritage to his wealthy Japanese clients who are all too eager to own a memento of the time when America was young and powerful. Mr. Tagomi, a high official of the ranking Trade Mission, is preparing for an important visit by Mr. Baynes, ostensibly a Swedish industrialist. Beneath the surface, deeply ingrained prejudices, frustrations, and repressed anger interfere with the simplest decisions while the reclusive Abendsen's alternate history novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, captures the public's imagination with a fantastic tale of what the world might be like if the Allies had won the war. Dick has written a remarkably clever novel of ideas here, and makes it move with remarkable power and suspense. There isn't too much action, certainly no war, so adventure lovers may not find this book particularly to their taste, and the ending certainly leaves the reader wanting more, but the subtleties in the behavior of the different social classes to each other, the underhanded way the lower classes try to cheat their so-called superiors, the way the upper classes manipulate their social inferiors, the widespread reliance on the I Ching to search for answers within, and Dick's sardonic view of his own position in the world as shown in the character of Abendsen, all combine to give a remarkably clear vision of how things not only might have been different, but also of how things might have been the same - the winners oppress the losers no matter what their backgrounds.
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Summary: Thought-provoking, but...
Review: Dick takes us on a journey through one of the most unthinkable "what if" scenarios: Germany has won World War II. Through tidbits along the way, we learn of some of the factors that contributed the the defeat of the United States. It's a well thought-out alternative history. Without spoiling anything, I'll tell you that there is a "book within the book." When you read about this, ask yourself exactly what Dick is satirizing--what is he getting at? Unfortunately I found the ending unsatisfying. However, the book is memorable, and a good reminder of a possible world that was prevented by the actions of the Allies in WWII.
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Summary: Classic Dick
Review: With works like this and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" it is odd that Phillip K Dick is not more widely read than he is, as his books rate for the most part with the doyens of American 20th century literature. This is the curse, I guess, of being branded a Sci-Fi Writer. It's embarassing to admit you like Sci-Fi. The Man in the High Castle is superbly realised and depicted, and as with most of Dick's fiction, the outward subject of the book (in this case an alternative history of the 20th Century in which the Axis won the war and Japan and Germany conquered America) is only really the setting for a fascinating examination of the human protagonists, and the dilemmas of life they face inside it. For this reason alone, his books have tended not to date; the particular issues they address are not of technology or history, but largely of personality and "spirituality" (for want of a better word). The Man In The High Castle is also very well observed - in partiucular the ever-so slightly contorted constructions of Japanese English emanating from those in the Pacific States (whether Japanese or not) are very cleverly done. It is noteworthy that Dick doesn't stoop to make soft scores: there is little overt reference to the atrocities of the Second World War, and neither the German not the Japanese occupations are depicted as wholly brutal or totalitarian regimes - this is implied to an extent for the German regime, but none of the action really takes place there, and the Japanese government is portrayed surprisingly sympathetically, particularly at an individual level. Ultimately, The Man In The High Castle descends out of focus and into incoherency, but as mentioned above, plot wasn't really what interested Dick, and this tends to be a characteristic of his novels. Recommended.
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Summary: A rewarding, deeply complex novel about alternate histories
Review: Phillip K. Dick is one of those authors who is most known for adaptations of his works, such as the movies Total Recall and Blade Runner. The Man in the High Castle, which many consider to be his masterpiece, has not been made into a movie and is really too wonderfully complex and literary to ever be made into a movie. The novel is the story of the world in 1962, after the Japanese and Germans have WON World War II. It tells of a California which is strongly influenced by Japanese and their culture and the ancient oracle, the I Ching, the Book of Changes. Into this society move characters trying either to fit into this world or to somehow come to grips with morality and individuality under totalitarian governments. As much as the book is about this new world, it is also about the creation of alternate histories, as a popular novel expores what would have happened if Japan and Germany had lost. The new history of this novel within a novel is interesting, and Dick does a masterful job of using the novel all the characters read to explore what he himself is writing in The Man in the High Castle. It is similar to Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut in that we are drawn into two novels at once, one only seen in glimpses, and both of these novels tell us something about the world in which we live.
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Summary: Which one is the alternate reality?
Review: Winner of the Hugo Award in 1962, the basic premise of this book is irresistible: that there is an alternate universe in which Germany and Japan won World War II. Philosophically, the book has proved deep enough to spark plenty of critical debate, and its use of the I Ching helped popularize that five-thousand-year-old Chinese oracle in America in the 1960s. Naziism is portrayed as an unmitigated evil, the yang to Japan's yin, and the Japanese come off much better in comparison, becoming humane rulers in the world of the novel, which is set in California. Even more interesting than the alternate history scenario are the questions the novel raises about ontological priority-which reality is real and which fake? Are we the ones living in the fictitious reality? Additionally, the characters are memorable and subtly drawn. Their lives touch tangentially in a fascinating dance. The narrative point of view switches among them, often in a stream-of-consciousness mode, in one of Dick's most successful uses of the multi-focal technique.
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Summary: Fictional Characters Learning about the Real World
Review: It looks like many people misunderstood this book. This book is certainly not an alternative history in terms of a plot. The alternative history provides at most a setting. The point of the book is not whether Operation Dandelion is carried out or thwarted; the point is comparing where the characters stand in their "alternate" reality to what is really real. At the end of the book, some of the characters discover what we know to be real: that Germany and Japan actually lost the war. Some of the details in the Grasshopper book are wrong because the I Ching just gave the general outline, and Abendsen filled in the details. In this way, it seems that the I Ching wishes to give the characters some comfort for their dreary existence under totalitarian rule. This theme has parallels in both philosophy and religion from both the East and West. The first that came to my mind was the Cave analogy from Plato's Republic, with the characters that are trapped in a dark shadowy world they perceive to be reality until the Sun illuminates everything to show things as they actually are. Dick has said before that what makes a sf story is not its setting, but that the central character is an idea that gets people to think. The central character in this book is certainly something to contemplate long after the book itself is put away. Highly recommended.
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