The Man In The High Castle (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.” If Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been assassinated in 1934 instead of dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, what would the world look like? Do our lives, our futures, hang on the shoulders of one man? The New Deal that gave Roosevelt so much power, so much influence with the American public, would not have been possible if presented by a different man, a less sure man, a man more willing to make deals to pass the legislation even if it guts the intent of the program. The American people have probably never trusted a politician as much as they trusted FDR. So if we remove him from history during those critical years in the 1940s when the world went mad, what would happen? Philip K. Dick is going to tell you. We lose. The Pacific States form a new country called The Pacific States of America and are controlled by Imperial Japan. A Rocky Mountain States is formed as a buffer between The Reich Controlled East Coast of America and the PSA. Europe is under the management of the Reich. The Soviets were completely destroyed by the Reich, and most were exterminated. A cold war has sprung up between the two remaining superpowers: the Japanese and the Reich. Adolf Hitler has descended into madness…batshit crazy madness... not the garden variety I want to rule the world madness. ”Old Adolf, supposed to be in a sanitarium somewhere, living out his life of senile paresis. Syphilis of the brain, dating back to his poor days as a bum in Vienna...long black coat, dirty underwear, flophouses.”There is this interesting film called Max starring John Cusack from 2002 that was directed by Menno Meyjes. It discusses the possibility of what would have happened if Hitler had been accepted as an artist. Would he have channeled his anger into something more edifying than world destruction? I know that others, besides myself, must have watched that film, but they seem to be few and far between. Noah Taylor plays the young, frustrated Hitler.Martin Bormann has been in charge of the Reich, but with his death a power struggle has broken out between Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, and Hermann Göring for the ultimate leadership. The thought of those men surviving the war gives me a chill. Hitler may have brought the vision, but these were the men who implemented it. Robert Childan owns an Americana antique business on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The Japanese are avid collectors of old American gadgets, comic books, and toys. He used to run a bookstore, but found that dealing in Americana was much more profitable. He isn’t an expert, which as the story unfolds, creates some issues for him. People don’t mind paying exorbitant prices as long as what they buy is legitimate. He meets a young progressive Japanese couple who want to discuss a future based on the book by Hawthorne Abendsen called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which presents an alternative reality where the Axis lost and the Allies won. It is still different from our present day, but certainly more recognizable than the dystopia of The Man in the High Castle. Philip K. Dick is having a bit of fun writing an alternative reality which includes a novel about alternative reality. The young couple are very disappointed to learn that Childan has not read the book. They assumed that any “American” would want to read this book. They were also disappointed that Childan, when pressed for his own philosophical take on this life, mouths the platitudes of the controlling governments because he thinks that is what his potential clients want to hear. I expected more from one of my own kind, a retired bookseller, but in his defense he doesn’t want unwarranted attention. He doesn’t want change as much as he wants to be safe. “What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn’t it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small . . . and you will escape the jealousy of the great.” Mokkei Tiger from the 13th CenturyChildan does get a glimmer of a lost past that might be reclaimed by the future when he holds the Frank Frink jewelry collection in his hands. Frink has recently left his work of employment, where he made replica guns from America’s past (for those Japanese collectors), to start his own business designing and creating original jewelry. To Childan the jewelry is much more than just pretty bobbles to adorn women’s throats, fingers, and wrists. It represents the American ingenuity that used to determine the fashions, trends, and innovations that led the world. Meanwhile, Frink’s ex-wife, who lives in the RMS, has taken up with a truck driver who is not who he says he is. He has an agenda involving The Man in the High Castle. The man, Abendsen, who has taken the world by storm with his book depicting a different outcome from the war.The I Ching plays a pivotal role as characters use I Ching to make decisions. Dick also used the I Ching to determine the twists of the plot as he was writing it. Having difficulty making decisions? Do you find that most of the time you make poor decisions? Turn your life over to the I Ching. Your future will no longer be your fault.This book convinced me of the viability of this alternative reality. I certainly would have read more about this world that Dick created. The ending is open because Dick had always planned to write a sequel, but he couldn’t progress on the second book because he couldn’t stand the thought of going back and reading about Nazis. I’m in the same boat recently with all the history channels that I normally watch suddenly becoming obsessed with everything Third Reich. This is disturbing to me because programming is based off viewership, and obviously they have determined that people are tuning in to watch Nazi documentaries more than other much more fascinating time periods of world history. *Sigh* I don’t know what that means!Amazon has recently filmed the pilot episode of a new series based on The Man in the High Castle. The episode is available on streaming. I read this book another lifetime ago, but wanted to refresh my memory before watching the pilot episode. I’m glad I did as much of my memories of the book had eroded into snippets of disjointed pieces. There is much more in the book than what I’ve discussed, but I hope what I have decided to highlight will encourage more people to read this novel of science fiction that also can rest comfortably on the same shelf as literature. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visithttp://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
The Man in the High Castle: Axis Powers win WWII, and then things get weirdAlso posted at Fantasy LiteratureThis is a strange and sinister book, even for Philip K. Dick. It’s a carefully-crafted alternate history about a world in which the Axis powers won WWII and now dominate the globe (other notable books in this vein include Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore and Pavane by Keith Roberts), but being PKD that is just the beginning. It prominently features the I Ching (Book of Changes), an ancient Chinese classic that serves as a sort of oracle or fortune telling device for several of the characters. The Pacific States of America are dominated by the Japanese, while the former Unites States of America on the East Coast are ruled by the Germans, with the more independent Rocky Mountain States in between.This world of 1962 is a grim one living under the fascist and totalitarian rule of the Japanese and Germans (who themselves are locked in various intrigues that seethe throughout the book). Surprisingly, at least to me, the Nazis are depicted as far more capricious, cruel, zealous and maniacal than the Japanese, who are instead more logical, calculated, and strict but fair. Most of the novel’s characters live under Japanese rule, and despite their feelings that the Japanese are cold and inscrutable, they manage in varying degrees to live their lives. Ideas about racial superiority/inferiority abound amongst the Americans, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, and blacks: this world is profoundly divided along racial lines, but the Nazis reserve the top position on for blond, blue-eyed Aryans, so even their erstwhile Italian allies get short shrift. Regarding the Jews and blacks, they take a ruthless exterminationist approach, whereas the Japanese prefer to treat more moderately the peoples they rule. But in either case they look down upon their subjects.PKD depicts the political, cultural, and racial relationships between rulers and subjects with a very deft touch, and his vision is terrifying for anyone who has speculated about this “what-if” scenario. I think this scored him high points and helped The Man in the High Castle win the Hugo Award in 1963 (though many fans of Golden Age old-school SF writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov must have been horrified).However, the book’s other major story arc features a story-within-a-story, in fact an alternate-history novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, in which Japan and Germany lose the war to the Americans, British, Russians, and Italians (who switch sides). Okay, are we talking about our world? No, this reality is slightly different as well (the Pearl Harbor attack didn’t destroy the US naval fleet, etc.).Now we’re talking. PKD is never content to tell a standard narrative without some twist on reality (realities?), and this book plays a major role in the ending of The Man in the High Castle.That ending is very ambiguous and open-ended, and the I Ching plays a pivotal role in this. I won’t reveal more than that, but clearly PKD took a unique approach to writing this book, and throws a couple of reality-shaking curveballs at the end (you know something must be coming or it wouldn’t be a PDK novel). Whether that works as a compelling story or not is up to the individual reader. For me, though I really appreciate the intricate world-building and plot, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the ending, although the individual characters’ stories were fascinating.The biggest drawback of the story was that so many characters rely on the I Ching to help in their daily decision-making, along with the conceit that this ancient Chinese classic serves as an oracle and has been introduced by the Japanese occupiers. I’ve lived in Japan for over 15 years, and not once in my entire time here has any Japanese person I know ever mentioned this book. So I think PDK just completely shoe-horned it into his story because he wanted to, not because it is an important part of Japanese culture. Buddhism (various sects) and Shintoism (essentially animism) are alive and well in Japan, but I’ve never seen anyone here throwing yarrow stalks to decide whether they should cross the street or not, eat ramen or gyoza, enter Tokyo University or Keio, or any other decision. So this just totally struck me as off, and his depiction of inscrutable, poker-faced Japanese was a bit too stereotyped for my taste.So did I enjoy the book or not? Definitely. After not having read any of his work my first 40 years, I read ten PDK books last year, but I’d say my favorites were Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, UBIK, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and VALIS. This time I listened to the audiobook of The Man in the High Castle, and it remains unique and memorable. Our version of reality is much less grim than the one he depicts, but we don’t need the I Ching to tell us that.
What do You think about The Man In The High Castle (1992)?
I asked the I Ching if this review was any good, and it gave me Hexagram 48, The Well:Folks come and go and draw from the well so long as they get to its water. A well with clear, limpid water suggests sincerity."Suggests sincerity" sounds to me like the I Ching is hedging its bets, but Dick warns you that it's a duplicitous, lying bastard, so I'm not surprised. I Ching, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is a great review! You really gotta try harder, you know?
—notgettingenough
An alternative history tale set in a US where the Axis powers won the Second World War. America has been divided into a Japanese colony on the West Coast, a German colony on the East Coast and sort of a midwest buffer state between the two. The themes of the two intertwined stories are familiar to PKD veterans; People are not who they seem to be, reality is not as real as you might think, the counterfeit is indistinguishable from the "real". Paranoia and epistemological rantings abound.This is not as weird a book as you usually get from PKD. I was a little disappointed that some of the strangeness I had come to expect was missing, however, this is also one of the best plotted and least confusing of the PKD books I have read thus far. I would rec this to anyone who hasn't read any PKD yet and is looking for a good place to enter. Also to any fans who haven't gotten around to it yet (or exact copies of such fans who don't know yet they are actually just copies.)
—Ed [Redacted]
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.
—Raeden Zen
