Religion In Sci-fi

8/23/12 The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick, 1962. Wow! Spectacular! Super dense, but all the threads tie back together. Amazing. It seems to be about racial and social stereotypes, especially the Japanese/Asian and German/Aryan types. But the main characters reveal deep inner realms. The action is commonplace and calm for quite a while, but all of a sudden much more major events explode. The book within a book concept is simply cute at first, and then reality unravels. I just realized that characteristic is like the I Ching prophecies he uses ... cool!
Within this book are many religious references and themes, and I am sure a re-reading would uncover even more, but here are a few I found especially interesting.
P113 ... A character mentions a book, Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West, an advice columnist who “receives heartache problems constantly is driven mad by the pain and has the delusion he is J. Christ ... strange view about suffering ... meaning of pain for no reason, problem which all religions cope with ...”
P164 ... “Hexagram Fifty-one! God appears in the sign of the Arousing. Thunder and lightning.” This leads into an important scene.
p201 ... After Mr. Tagomi kills the two intruders, his Buddhist background is extremely upset. Baynes thought, “Another frame of reference which might help him would be the Doctrine of Original Sin.”
p230 ... Mr. Tagomi’s visionary reaction to the jewelry includes mention of “in the Bardo Thodol afterlife existence” and p233 ... “St. Paul’s incisive word choice ... seen through glass darkly not a metaphor” ...
P237 ... His anger at the German official leads him to say ... “ancient divine, Goodman C. Mather. Deals, I am told, with guilt and hell-fire, et. al.” ... “Repent!”