Book review: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

A Thought-Provoking, Frightening, Mind-Twisting, Alternate Fiction Experience

 "Taking the book, she read the back part of the jacket. ‘He’s an ex-service man. He was in the US Marine Corps in World War Two, wounded in England by a Nazi Tiger Tank. A sergeant. It says he’s got practically a fortress that he writes in, guns all over the place.’ Setting the book down, she said, ‘And it doesn’t say so here, but I heard someone say that he’s almost a sort of paranoid; charged barbed wire around the place, and it’s set in the mountains. Hard to get to…his place is called—’ She glanced at the book jacket. ‘The High Castle…’"

 Open “The Man in the High Castle" and enter North America under totalitarian Fascist imperial rule in 1962. Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany were the victors of WWII and the Reich and the Emperor of Japan have split the US apart with the West in control of Japan, the East and South in control of the Reich and the Mountain States a sort of nexxus of the former US.

 The plot follows five main lines including: Baynes, Swiss merchant; Frank Frink, a jewelry salesman; Tagomi, employee of the Nippon Times in San Francisco; Juliana Frink, Frank’s ex-wife; and Robert Childan, seller of “unique” antique Americana goods. In PKD’s post WWII-world, no one is what they seem, espionage runs rampant, everyone uses the “I Ching” to determine their future, Japanese act as overlords to humbled “whites” and enjoy collecting ancient American souvenirs, the Nazi’s continue with their genocide of the Jews and their hatred of books, none more so than the “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," the alternative history novel within-the-alternate history universe that suggests Germany and Japan…gasp…lost to the Allies.

 The most terrifying aspect of the novel is that at times it feels so real, as if Mr. Dick lived in this US world occupied by the Germans and the Japanese. Perhaps this is where some readers will be jarred, for anyone familiar with the Third Reich and Imperial Japan would know that these powers would not have divvied up the world so cleanly; of course, that is the implication of the denouement of this classic Hugo winner.

 The bottom line: light on characterization, long on philosophy, ideas, and world-building, “The Man in the High Castle" stretches the limits of speculative fiction in a way that should resonate with most readers.