The Man in the High Castle in On Paths Unknown

Mar 17, 2013 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Another entry in the "what if the Axis powers had won the war?" genre. Interesting because of the ideas that are entertained rather then for being believeable (which it isn't). The novel is set in the US which is now divided into a Nazi puppet state in the East (like Vichy France), a neutral buffer state in the middle and a Japanese controlled west coast. The Mediterranean has been drained and Africa turned into a wasteland. The sci-fi element is present with rocket type planes making the journe ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Kamakana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-twice-or-more, espionage, all-five-star, zz1962, speculative-fiction, aa-unitedstateslit, literature, pomo, dick-philip-k, althistory

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

220315: 6th review. just cannot help rereading this, though not much new to add, except maybe it is more convincing that life in japanese-controlled territory is good overall, again an easy, flowing read, that i have read author is modelled on heinlein, that 'eastern aesthetics' is seamlessly integrated, that, as with any great novel, each time it is read i find new insights, scenes, moments, even stylistic touches of typical 'j if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

220315: 6th review. just cannot help rereading this, though not much new to add, except maybe it is more convincing that life in japanese-controlled territory is good overall, again an easy, flowing read, that i have read author is modelled on heinlein, that 'eastern aesthetics' is seamlessly integrated, that, as with any great novel, each time it is read i find new insights, scenes, moments, even stylistic touches of typical 'japanese' poetics/prose that i might have missed the first few times, thinking it was just dick's style. and the rounded characters, complex motivations, often frustrated agency, often passive drifting... this is definitely dick's best work and i have read a few... i remember even trying the The I Ching or Book of Changes until deciding it was simply as any oracle: endlessly interprative...

010218: 5th review. so now i know where to look for a certain scenes (pg. 168-195), though i did reread it all again. and it works fine. thought of assertions of stylistic mundanity, decided it works to tell the most fantastic in the most mundane way. not poetry: ideas. but then also subtle indications in absorption of social thinking dominant to place, time, social structures. no distraction, no insistence, no infodumps, this is easy to reread. and i like the way it ends and does not end...

earlier review last time read: definitely a favorite. premise and possibilities are outlined everywhere else, but what works for me is the layered, glancing, significant interweaving of the plot. characters who have no immediate contact affect each other, sometimes in radically important ways, and the novel is full of ideas rather than spectacle. some argument it is even 'science' fiction, as it contains little science, no explanation for this alternative world...

there is a cross-section of the world in characters, in their thoughts, in how they live, and it is not all super archetype powerful types nor only simply those carried along by changes...

there are dick’s meditations on real and fake, art and how various cultures value it, make it, sell it...

there is buried causality and truth and chance revealed as inevitable...

there is the wonderful book-within-the-book which posits yet another reality...

i have read the whole at least 4(?) times, parts of it more, and count it as my favorite dick book. however much the oracle i ching affected the book… this does not matter. this is one of the best sf novels to read and discover the power of good sf that no other genre let alone mundane fiction can display... ...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Nate D rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2010, sci-fi, favorites

Astonishing alternative present circa 1962, foregoing technological concerns in favor of the tangled social and political consequences of Axis success in WW2, the no-longer-united-States divided between Germany and Japan. Sparkling with a compelling spectrum of very human characters, strange cross-cultural insights, the moral un-compassing of choosing between all-bad-political options, and Pynchonesque mysticism and death-fetishization. Stylistically fluid and tightly, economically arranged, san ...more

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Aug 03, 2017 Damon rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi

This story feels very unfinished. Seems like an idea that PKD experimented with and then put back down. It ended at the point it felt as though it was just beginning.

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Jun 08, 2012 Sean DeLauder rated it really liked it

Shelves: pkdick

I once spoke briefly with a relative of mine about story construction. His advice, which he followed from Kurt Vonnegut, was to establish the central conflict of the story early (i.e., what is the goal of the story?). In doing so the reader isn't left to wonder why they're bothering to read the book.

This is, to say the least, not the strategy employed by Dick. Almost 70 years have passed since the conclusion of the second world war, so the Gasp factor of imagining a world where the allies lost t I once spoke briefly with a relative of mine about story construction. His advice, which he followed from Kurt Vonnegut, was to establish the central conflict of the story early (i.e., what is the goal of the story?). In doing so the reader isn't left to wonder why they're bothering to read the book.

This is, to say the least, not the strategy employed by Dick. Almost 70 years have passed since the conclusion of the second world war, so the Gasp factor of imagining a world where the allies lost to the axis has diminished somewhat--at least for me. What remains as impetus for the book is shrouded in allusions that gradually become more coherent and forceful as the book progresses, and is actually far more fascinating than the presumption of a tables-turned version of the US and world. That impetus is the existence of a book that, in a metafictional bit of drama that threatens to break the fourth wall, presumes what the world would be like if the US had won.

Dick plays with this assumed book and its narrative vision with comical expertise, deliberately avoiding the history the reader knows for a UK that returns to global dominance. In what I consider the most comical line in the entire story, a character muses why such an alternative history had never been written before--it seemed such an obvious premise. I envision Dick penning this line with a grin on his face and pausing to enjoy it for some time before moving on.

Throughout, Dick is a master at, at the very least, extrapolating perceived WWII Nazi and Japanese motives past the point of an imagined victory. From Nazis bolstered by rare scientific genius and hamstrung by depravities, to Japanese masters of formality, control, and manipulation, yet trapped in a (according to Dick) non-creative cultural stasis.

I have to take a star away only because the story doesn't quite satisfy. Apart from meandering between a few characters that provide opportunities to better explain the nature of their existence in their alternate timeline, they are not central to the main plot, if it can be said that there really is a main sequence of Action. [spoilers removed]

Of course, most striking about the story was the idea that despite these changes, despite control of the world being ceded to what we perceive as one of the most evil regimes in history, there are plenty of parallels to be drawn to the modern world. We still suffer from, what in this political environment seem, high levels of intolerance. We still fret about the destruction of our country or our world for the purpose of an ideology. Perhaps the most poignant line in the story, in light of the election season, was this, following the death of the Nazi regime leader:

"So we presume that the worst, rather than the best, choice will be made. The sober and responsible elements will be defeated in the present clash."

This certainly seems like the perception of the voting parties. To each, the alternative is not just a bad choice, but will bring about annihilation through the profoundest ignorance.

Maybe it is because these are universal, eternal, and sobering truths about humanity, that this story, in spite of its age and twist on history, remains both relevant and disquieting, and that through some trick of good or bad luck we are always a hair's breadth from the loss of our freedoms to the bugbear of fascism. ...more

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