The Man in the High Castle in Philip K Dick

Jan 03, 2013 Ümit Mutlu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, foreign, science-fiction, modern-classics, sf-metis

"An değişir. İnsan onunla birlikte değişmeye hazır olmalı. Yoksa yüzüstü kalakalır. Adapte ol.

Sağ kalmanın kuralı, diye düşündü. Gözlerini çevrendeki konuma açık tut. Senden neler talep ettiğini öğren. Ve bu talepleri karşıla. Doğru zamanda doğru şeyi yap."

Paralel evrenler ve paralel gerçeklikten, belki de hiç varolmamış ve olmayacak olan gerçeklikten bahsediyor. Her şey bambaşka olsa her şeyin nasıl da aynı olacağını gösteriyor. K. Dick'in en iyisi değil, ama çok iyisi. ...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

My Philip K. Dick Project #21

Entry #21 - The Man In The High Castle (written Fall 1961, published Oct. 1962)

The Man in the High Castle is a new high from Dick, fully integrating his “science-fiction” work with his literary ambitions. It marks the end of Dick’s attempts to write mainstream literary novels, and the beginning of the second phase of his career. Dick here is in full control, confident and assured, and the results are spellbinding. The honor bestowed upon this book, The Hugo Award, c My Philip K. Dick Project #21

Entry #21 - The Man In The High Castle (written Fall 1961, published Oct. 1962)

The Man in the High Castle is a new high from Dick, fully integrating his “science-fiction” work with his literary ambitions. It marks the end of Dick’s attempts to write mainstream literary novels, and the beginning of the second phase of his career. Dick here is in full control, confident and assured, and the results are spellbinding. The honor bestowed upon this book, The Hugo Award, combined with the humiliation of having all of his rejected mainstream efforts of the last ten or so years dropped off in a heap on his doorstep, prompted Dick’s career and ambitions to go in a different direction.
In the Pacific States of America (a Japanese puppet state consisting of Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, and parts of Nevada), the story follows Robert Childan, an American antiques dealer, Frank Frink, a secret Jew and forger of antiques, Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese official in the Pacific Trade Mission, and Mr. Baynes, a Swedish industrialist with a secret agenda. In the neutral buffer zone between the P.S.A. and the Reich-controlled East Coast, we follow Juliana, a judo instructor and Frank Frink’s estranged wife and Joe Cinnadella, an Italian truck-driver.
Of course, Dick takes a different approach to the material than you might expect. It’s a subtler, and to my mind a more realistic (or more likely) vision of life in an alternate world. There’s no megalomaniacal Hitler ruling the globe with an iron fist (mentioned briefly only a few times, he’s rotting away in some sanitarium.) Americans don’t necessarily like being subjugated by the Germans, but they’ll still talk among themselves about German politics and which Führer they’d prefer. The west coast isn’t subjugated under harsh Japanese rule in which you have to learn Japanese in school and swear an oath to the Emperor everyday. Instead, it’s a slightly backward mostly quiet place in which Americans live as second-class citizens under the affluent Japanese upper-class. But young Japanese take Christian names and lust after pre-war American antiques. Perhaps Dick’s smartest move is to acknowledge that no matter which way it ended, the war did end, and people go on with their lives as best they can, they survive and adapt. It’s 1962 now, and life goes on. For the younger generation, this is the only world they know. Germany and Japan are no longer in the business of war. They are in the more mundane business of government and reconstruction.
There is fascinating commentary on the queasily nihilistic and disturbing inner world of the Nazis, the sinister grotesqueness of it all. Dick has a lot of fun extrapolating the internecine political infighting the upper party members were famous for, especially the race to become the next Führer after Hitler’s successor, Martin Bormann, dies during the story.
The crux of the story lies with the illegal best-seller and book within the book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which, like The Man in the High Castle, describes an alternate reality, specifically one in which Germany and Japan lost the war. Having known the basic plot of this book almost since beginning this project, I had a strong hunch how this would turn out. The book would describe our world as we know it, and the author would turn out to be a thinly veiled alternate version of Philip K. Dick. My first hint that I was wrong comes from passages of Grasshopper, which indeed describes a world in which Germany and Japan lost the war, but it is not our world. Instead, Dick goes in a much more interesting yet ambiguous direction. It’s no coincidence that the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of changes, figures prominently in this book and especially in the ending. The ending is not an easy ending to process, and I must confess that I read this book twice (like most of Dick’s books, it’s not especially long), in hopes of catching some clues or keys to better my understanding. However, the ending does not, in fact, hinge on some hidden plot twist or event from earlier in the book that later takes on significance. Instead of commenting on the reality or lack thereof of a world in which Germany and Japan won, or on its opposite, Dick instead questions the nature of any reality, at least according to my interpretation. It’s fascinating and sobering all at the same time, the kind of ending that forces you to think for a few hours afterwards and try to puzzle out what it all means.
The novel has a haunting, noirish quality to it, full of great passages and ideas. The characters are well-drawn and compelling. There’s a philosophical richness to it, without any easy answers. Themes of cultural identity, morality, politics, authenticity, art, and of course the nature of reality abound and draw you in. It’s a fully drawn peek into a world that might have been, or might yet be.

Stray thoughts: # For anyone familiar at all with Japanese, the strange names encountered in this book will prove to be a distraction and a disappointment, especially considering how much research and effort Dick seems to have put into this book. Seeing names like Tagomi, Kasoura, etc, is like reading a serious literary novel set in the United States but with character names like Johnnyson, Browny, or Steinbeard.

#I don’t really think it’s made clear enough how or by whom the neutral buffer zone, The Rocky Mountain States is governed. Seems like it would be easy for either the Empire or the Reich to swoop in and take that over.

#This concludes Dick's trilogy of books that start with "The Man... (The Man Who Japed, The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, The Man in the High Castle) Coincidentally, they each seem to represent one of the three "types" of Dick books, the early pulpy SF, the mainstream novel, and his later literary SF.

My edition: Penguin Books, paperback, 1988

Up next: “We Can Build You” !

August 6th, 2012 ...more

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Mar 29, 2014 Mustafa Özgür rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A novel of PKD that creates another world (nebenwelt) with another reality by changing the 'victorious'es of the world war II. Dick takes WWII as an inflection point among the human history and let Hitler live till 1947, Martin Bormann as the next führer of the german people and so on, and similar to our world next führer is Joseph Goebbels :).

Germany and Japan are two super powers of this "NebenWelt" and the cold war goes on between them; the story in the book is about this struggle; but, for m A novel of PKD that creates another world (nebenwelt) with another reality by changing the 'victorious'es of the world war II. Dick takes WWII as an inflection point among the human history and let Hitler live till 1947, Martin Bormann as the next führer of the german people and so on, and similar to our world next führer is Joseph Goebbels :).

Germany and Japan are two super powers of this "NebenWelt" and the cold war goes on between them; the story in the book is about this struggle; but, for me, the most striking part of the novel was seeing Hermann Göring (chef der Luftwaffe), Baldur von Schirach (reichsjugendführer), Heinrich Himmler (reichsführer SS), Dr. Arthur Seys-Inquart (bundeskanzler der österreich), Adolf Eichmann (SS-führer , sentenced to death in Israel, in our world :) ), Walter Schellenberg (chef der SD und abwehr), reichsadmiral Wilhelm Canaris (also chef der abwehr), and of course Dr. Joseph Goebbels (reichspropagandaminister) live, as they've been resurrected for an alternative history.

I forgot to mention reinhard heydrich (hitler named him as mann mit dem eisernen herzen), whom survived an assasination attemp in Prag but wounded badly and had died after eight days at the age 38, in our world :). He is the one of next generation nazi leader in the book, where the old names are "altparteigenosse".

As a man interested in WWII, it was a very good reading for me. The next reading of this kind will be "Vaterland" by Robert Harris of course.

I put a paragraph from the book that I liked very much;

“...She always liked people to look at her, admire her; anybody. I guess most women are like that. They crave attention all the time. They’re very babyish that way.
He thought, Juliana could never stand being alone; she had to have me around all the time complimenting her. Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren’t watching what they do then what they do isn’t real. No doubt she’s got some guy noticing her right now. Telling her how pretty she is. Her legs. Her smooth, flat stomach...”
...more

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Oct 13, 2014 Paul rated it really liked it

Second reading of this novel. I could appreciate some of the deeper themes of the book more than first-time around. For a short work it covers a lot of deep issues: the nature of evil; authenticity; and moral responsibility. Although the ending is somewhat disappointing, this is still a major work.

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Feb 11, 2016 Andrew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The Man in the High Castle is a book that I have planned to read for around a decade. After such a length of time, and since loving various other Philip K. Dick novels, I can definitely say it is not what I expected. Most notably, and I hope this isn't perceived as a spoiler in any way, is that it could barely - or even at all - be described as science fiction (and interestingly, such a discussion features in the narrative). Out of the books I've read by P.K.D, this reminded me of one of his mor ...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Steve Williams rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-masterworks, sci-fi, 2012-reads

3 and a half stars.

My second PKD book and really enjoyed 'Sheep'. (Still not seen Bladerunner.) Much of this I liked too but it did go somewhat off track in the last third which was difficult to follow. Worth another read and definitely got you thinking. It just seemed that having thought about and established the alternate world, the hows and whys it was a shame that the last part of the novel should become so dissipated. I actually envisaged the book just turning into wisps of smoke... ...more

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Apr 20, 2014 Steven rated it really liked it

Strangely enough, this is one of my least favorite PKD novels. I know, it's the one that has won the most awards and it is highly revered. It's a good book, but for me I feel that it lacks the hallmarks that are what make PKD, PKD. ...more

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