The Man in the High Castle by Dick, Philip K., and reader: To be announced

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The Man in the High Castle from Science Fiction

The Man in the High Castle
Available from Amazon
Price: $16.47
Updated on 12-13-2008.

Features

Audio CD: 7 pages

Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.; Unabridged edition (June 1, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1433214547

ISBN-13: 978-1433214547

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces ()

Review
The teratological curiosity of the American reading public, whetted and abetted by the press, could have made this novel a sure best seller. Consider the premises upon which Mr. Dick bases his book. They are fascinating: What if the Axis powers had won World War II? What if Germany and Japan had divided after conquering in 1947...Capitulation Day it is called? He takes the hypothesis one step further. It is fifteen years later... 1962. Africa is a "huge empty ruin" sacrificed to Nazi Medicare. The Mediterranean sea has been entirely drained, converted to tillable land. The "blond queens", the "near men" of the Gestapo have found a new use for the big toe. San Francisco is occupied by the Japanese. Old Adolph is in some sanitarium with syphilis of the brain and Martin Borman, heretofore the top man, has just died leaving the Axis powers with a choice among Goebbels, Heydrich, Goehring von Schirach and a couple of other cuties. How did the author turn this projected cosmos into a hinterland where only confusion and boredom reside for the reader? The Man in the High Castle is overpeopled, spattered with telegraphic dialogue simply absurd (A Japanese suicide says to his Colt .22 "Cough up arcane secret".) Finally, there is riddled throughout a quasi-mystique, a pseudo-religious leit motif relating to an Eastern machine that answers questions when asked. This one could be pushed solely on subject-matter. But it will disappoint greatly. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Man in the High Castle (Paperback) The Man in the High Castle is Dick's masterpiece. Along with VALIS and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it completes the trilogy of the author's essential works. A must read for Dickheads or for anyone who considers himself a serious fan of science fiction. Dick was clearly influenced by two earlier works of alternative history, Sarban's The Sound of His Horn and C. M. Kornbluth's "Two Dooms". In turn, The Man in the High Castle has influenced any number of later works, not just Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream and the novels of Harry Turtledove, but Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven as well. This is a very complex, suspenseful novel, consisting of four main plot lines and a host of characters whose lives sometimes interact. Don't expect any slam-bang pyrotechnic action here, despite the novel's provocative premise. It's more a slice of life tale, showing that even after a catastrophic defeat, life in America would go on. Dick is very good at detailing the nuances of life in Axis-ruled America. For example, at one point as an aside, it is pointed out that after the Nazi pograms, the only surviving prewar comedian is Bob Hope, and even he has to broadcast out of Canada. Also, an unintended irony for a novel written in 1962 is Dick's conjecture that if the United States had lost WWII, we would all be listening to Japanese audio equipment and driving German cars now. The author achieves the near impossible feat of actually being even-handed towards the Nazis without glamorizing them. He describes them at one point as Neanderthals in white lab coats, technological geniuses who have drained the Mediterranean and are conquering the Solar System, yet are morally bankrupt. Dick is much easier on the Japanese, depicting them not just as benign conquerors, but almost like a group of tourists, just off the latest JAL flight headed for the souvenir stand at Disneyland. Only in one brief instance when Juliana Frink reminiscences about conditions in San Francisco immediately after the occupation is their wartime rapacity even hinted at. Several other reviewers here appear to be put off that the novel didn't live up to the action and dramatic tension hinted at in the synopsis above or the 1964 Popular Library cover with its map of the United States superimposed by Nazi and Imperial Japanese flags. When I first read it back in 1964 at age fourteen, I felt much the same way. On rereading it in 1988, however, I saw it for its true worth, an existential novel of the first order (ranking with the best of Camus or Sartre). It represents the fullest flowering of Dick's most consistent theme: What is reality? The provocative setting of an alternative universe where the Axis has won World War II and now occupies a defeated and humiliated America is merely a sensational back drop for Dick's real theme: how can we be sure of what is real? Thus the seemingly minor scene involving two Zippo lighters is actually the key to understanding the whole novel. One is merely a minor collectible, the other is priceless, Mr. Wyndam-Matson tells his mistress. What's the difference? The one was the actual lighter FDR was carrying when he was assassinated in 1934. But how does he know it is real? Well, he has a paper that certifies it is. But how does he know the paper is real? And so on. Likewise, the emphasis on the Japanese obsession with collecting authentic relics of America's prewar past is a symbolic of the authenticity which all the novel's characters are seeking in their own diverse ways. The anticlimactic and ambiguous ending also only serves to re-enforce what Dick was trying to say. In retrospect, he couldn't have ended it any other way. To neatly wrap things up would only subvert the novel's whole premise.

The Man in the High Castle
List Price: $24.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $16.47
Updated on 12-13-2008.