.jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) | |
| Author | Philip K. Dick |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | alternative history,science fiction,philosophical fiction |
| Publisher | Putnam |
Publication date | October 1962 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 240 |
| OCLC | 145507009 |
| 813.54 | |
The Man in the High Castle is analternative history novel byPhilip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which theAxis powers wonWorld War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living underImperial Japan orNazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States. The eponymous character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitledThe Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied powers are victorious.
Dick's thematic inspirations include the alternative history of theAmerican Civil War,Bring the Jubilee (1953), byWard Moore, and theI Ching, a Chinese book of divination that features in the story and the actions of the characters.The Man in the High Castle won theHugo Award for Best Novel in 1963, and was adapted to television forAmazon Prime Video asThe Man in the High Castle in 2015.
In the alternative history imagined inThe Man in the High Castle,Giuseppe Zangara assassinatesPresident-electFranklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of theGreat Depression and the policy ofUnited States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939. American inaction allowsNazi Germany to conquer and annex continental Europe and the Soviet Union into theReich. The exterminations of theJews, theRomani, theJehovah's Witnesses, theSlavs, and all other peoples whom the Nazis consideredsubhuman ensued. The Axis powers then jointly conquered Africa, and still compete for the control of South America in 1962.[1] Imperial Japan won thewar in the Pacific and invaded theWest Coast of the United States, while Nazi Germany invaded theEast Coast; the surrender of theAllies ended World War II in 1947.
By 1962, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's superpowers, fighting ageopolitical cold war over the world, and in particular over the former United States and South America. Japan extended theCo-Prosperity Pacific Alliance with the establishment of the Pacific States of America (PSA), with the politically neutral Rocky Mountain States acting as a buffer against the Nazi territory to the east. Nazi North America is composed of two countries:The South, and the northeastern part of the former contiguous United States of America, which is referred to as "the U.S." in the book, both of which are ruled bycollaborationist pro-Nazi puppet regimes. Canada remains an independent country.
The agedAdolf Hitler is incapacitated bytertiary syphilis,Martin Bormann is the actingChancellor of Germany, and many high-ranking Nazi leaders—Joseph Goebbels,Reinhard Heydrich,Hermann Göring, andArthur Seyss-Inquart—still survive and vie to succeed Hitler as theFührer of the Greater Germanic Reich. Technologically, the Nazis havedrained the Mediterranean Sea forLebensraum and farmland, developed and used thehydrogen bomb, developed rockets for traveling throughout the world and intoouter space, and have undertakencolonization missions to the Moon and to the planets Venus and Mars.
In 1962, it has been fifteen years since Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany won World War II. InSan Francisco, in the Pacific States of America, Japanesejudicial racism has enslavedblack people and reduced the Chinese residents tosecond-class citizens. Businessman Robert Childan owns anantique shop there that specializes inAmericana for a Japanese clientele who is obsessed with cultural artifacts of the former United States. One day, Childan receives a request from Nobusuke Tagomi, a high-ranking trade official, who seeks a gift to impress a Swedish industrialist named Baynes. Childan cannot fulfill Tagomi's original request (a civil war recruiting poster) but is able to present alternatives because he is well-stocked with counterfeit antiques made by themetal works Wyndam-Matson Corporation.
Recently fired from his job at a Wyndam-Matson factory, Frank Frink (formerly Fink) is asecret Jew and war veteran who agrees to join a former co-worker to start a business making and selling jewelry. In the Rocky Mountain States, Frank's ex-wife, Juliana Frink, works as ajudo instructor inCanon City, Colorado and, in her private life, has begun a sexual relationship with Joe Cinnadella, an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier.
Frink blackmails the Wyndam-Matson Corporation for money to finance his jewelry business, threatening to expose that they are supplying counterfeit antiques to Childan. Tagomi and Baynes meet, but Baynes repeatedly delays conducting any real business because he awaits a third party from Japan. The Nazi news media announce that Chancellor of Nazi GermanyMartin Bormann has died after a short illness. Childan takes some of Frink's "authentic metalwork" jewelry onconsignment to curry favor with a Japanese client, who, to Childan's surprise, says it possesses muchWu, spiritual awareness. Juliana and Joe travel by road toDenver, Colorado, but en route Joe impulsively decides that they take a side trip toCheyenne, Wyoming, to meet Hawthorne Abendsen, the mysterious author ofThe Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a novel ofspeculative fiction that presents an alternate history of World War II wherein the Allies defeat the Axis. The Nazis banned the book in the U.S., but the Japanese allow its publication and sale in the Pacific States of America. Supposedly, Abendsen lives in a heavily guarded estate named the High Castle. The Nazi news media inform the public thatJoseph Goebbels is the new Chancellor of Nazi Germany.
After much delay, Baynes and Tagomi meet their Japanese contact, while theSicherheitsdienst (SD), the security service of the SS, is close to arresting Baynes, who is a Nazi defector, Rudolf Wegener. Baynes warns his contact, a Japanese general, of the existence of Operation Dandelion, Goebbels's plan for a Nazi sneak attack upon theJapanese Home Islands, with the goal of destroying the Empire of Japan. Frink is exposed as acrypto-Jew and arrested by the San Francisco police. Elsewhere, two SD agents confront Baynes and Tagomi, who uses his antique American pistol to kill both agents. In Colorado, Joe changes his appearance and mannerisms before the side trip to the High Castle in Wyoming; Juliana infers that Joe intends to assassinate Abendsen. Joe reveals himself to be a Swiss Nazi when he confirms his intention; Juliana kills Joe and goes to warn Abendsen.
Wegener flies back to Germany and learns thatReinhard Heydrich (a member of the faction against Operation Dandelion) has launched a coup d'état against Goebbels, to install himself as Chancellor of Nazi Germany. Tagomi is shocked at having killed the SD agents and goes to the antiques shop to sell the pistol back to Childan; instead, sensing the spiritual energy from one of Frink's jewelry creations, Tagomi buys the jewelry. Tagomi then undergoes an intense spiritual experience during which he momentarily perceives an alternative version of San Francisco, evinced by theEmbarcadero freeway, which he has never seen and by the fact that white people do not defer to Japanese people.
Tagomi later meets with the German consul in San Francisco and compels the Germans to free Frink, whom Tagomi has never met, by refusing to sign the order of extradition to Nazi Germany. Juliana has a spiritual experience when she arrives in Cheyenne. She discovers that Abendsen lives with his family in a normal house, having abandoned the High Castle because of a changed outlook on life; thus the possibility of being assassinated no longer worries him. After evading Juliana's questions about his literary inspiration, Abendsen says he used theI Ching, a Chinese book ofdivination, to guide the writing of his novel. Before leaving, Juliana infers then that Truth wrote the novel to reveal the Inner Truth that Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany did lose World War II in 1945.
Several characters inThe Man in the High Castle read the popular novelThe Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by Hawthorne Abendsen, the title of which the readers presume derives from the Bible verse fragment: "The grasshopper shall be a burden" (Ecclesiastes 12:5). As an alternative history of the Second World War, wherein the Allies defeat the Axis Powers, the Nazi regime bansThe Grasshopper Lies Heavy in the South, whereas the Pacific States of America allow the publication and sale of the counterfactual novel.[2]: 91
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy postulates that President Roosevelt survives the 1933 assassination attempt but chooses not to seekre-election in 1940. The next president,Rexford Tugwell, moves the American Pacific Fleet fromPearl Harbor, saving it from attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy, which ensures that the country is better equipped to fight the war.[2]: 70 Having retained most of their military-industrial capabilities, the United Kingdom contributes more to the Allied war effort, which facilitates the defeat ofErwin Rommel in theNorth African Campaign. The British fight the Axis armies through the Caucasus to join the Soviet Union and defeat the Nazis in theBattle of Stalingrad; theKingdom of Italy reneges its membership in the Axis and betrays the Nazis; the British Army joins theRed Army in theBattle of Berlin, the decisive defeat of Nazi Germany. At war's end in 1945, Hitler and the Nazi leaders are tried aswar criminals and are put to death,[2]: 131 with Hitler's last words beingDeutsche, hier steh' ich ("Germans, here I stand"), in imitation ofMartin Luther.
After the war, Tugwell promulgates theNew Deal for the countries of the world, which finances a decade of rebuilding in China and the education of illiterate peoples in the undeveloped countries of Africa and Asia, who receive television sets by which they are taught to read and write, are instructed in digging wells and in purifying water. The New Deal financial assistance facilitates American businesses building factories in the undeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. American society is peaceful and harmonious and is at peace with the other countries of the world; the war ends the Soviet Union. Ten years after the war, still headed by Winston Churchill, theBritish Empire becomes militaristic,anti-American and establishes prison camps in India for Chinese subjects considered disloyal. Suspecting that the United States is sponsoring the anti-colonial subversion of British colonial rule in Asia, Churchill provokes acold war for global hegemony; the geopolitical rivalry leads to an Anglo-American war won by the United Kingdom.[2]: 169–172
Dick said that he imagined the story ofThe Man in the High Castle (1962) from his reading of the novelBring the Jubilee (1953), byWard Moore, which is an alternative history of the U.S. civil war won by the Confederacy. In the acknowledgements page ofThe Man in the High Castle, Dick mentions the thematic influences of the popular historyThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1960), byWilliam L. Shirer; the biographyHitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952), byAlan Bullock;TheGoebbels Diaries (1948);Foxes of the Desert (1960), by Paul Carrell; and the 1950 translation of theI Ching, byRichard Wilhelm.[3][2]: ix–x As a novelist, Dick used theI Ching to craft the themes, plot and story ofThe Man in the High Castle, whose characters also use theI Ching to inform and guide their decisions.[3]
Dick cites the thematic influences of Japanese and Tibetan poetry upon the narrative ofThe Man in the High Castle; (i) Thehaiku in page 48 of the novel is from the first volume of theAnthology of Japanese Literature (1955), edited byDonald Keene; (ii) thewaka poem in page 135 is fromZen and Japanese Culture (1955), byD. T. Suzuki and (iii) the Tibetan book of the dead, theBardo Thodol (1960), edited byWalter Evans-Wentz and mentions the sociologic influences of theexpressionist novellaMiss Lonelyhearts (1933), byNathanael West, in which an unhappy newspaper reporter pseudonymously writes the "Miss Lonelyhearts" advice column, through which he dispenses advice to emotionally forlorn readers during theGreat Depression. Despite his job as Miss Lonelyhearts, the reporter seeks consolation in religion, sexual promiscuity, rural vacations and much work; no activity provides him with a sense of personal authenticity derived from his intellectual and emotional engagement with the world.[2]: 118
Avram Davidson praised the novel as a "superior work of fiction", citing Dick's use of theI Ching as "fascinating". Davidson concluded that "It's all here—extrapolation, suspense, action, art, philosophy, plot, [and] character".[4]The Man in the High Castle secured for Dick the 1963Hugo Award for Best Novel.[5][6][7] In a review of a paperback reprint of the novel,Robert Silverberg wrote inAmazing Stories magazine, "Dick's prose crackles with excitement, his characters are vividly real, his plot is stunning".[8]
InThe Religion of Science Fiction, Frederick A. Kreuziger explores the theory of history implied by Dick's creation of the two alternative realities
Neither of the two worlds, however, the revised version of the outcome of WWII nor the fictional account of our present world, is anywhere near similar to the world we are familiar with. But they could be! This is what the book is about. The book argues that this world, described twice, although differently each time, is exactly the world we know and are familiar with. Indeed, it is the only world we know: the world of chance, luck, fate.[9]
In her introduction to the Folio Society edition of the novel,Ursula K. Le Guin writes thatThe Man in the High Castle "may be the first, big lasting contribution science fiction made to American literature."[10]
An unabridgedThe Man in the High Castle audiobook, read byGeorge Guidall and running approximately 9.5 hours over sevenaudio cassettes, was released in 1997.[11] Another unabridged audiobook version was released in 2008 byBlackstone Audio, read by Tom Wyner (credited as Tom Weiner) and running approximately 8.5 hours over sevenCDs.[12][13] A third unabridged audiobook recording was released in 2014 byBrilliance Audio, read by Jeff Cummings with a running time of 9 hours 58 minutes.[14]
After a number of attempts to adapt the book to the screen, in October 2014,Amazon's film production unit began filming the pilot episode ofThe Man in the High Castle inRoslyn, Washington, for release through theAmazon Prime Video streaming service.[15][16] The pilot episode was released byAmazon Studios on January 15, 2015,[17][18] and was Amazon's "most watched pilot ever" according to Amazon Studios' vice president, Roy Price.[19] On February 18, 2015, Amazon green-lit the series.[20] The show became available for streaming on November 20, 2015.[21]
In a 1976 interview, Dick said he planned to write a sequel novel toThe Man in the High Castle: "And so there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending. It will segue into a sequel sometime."[22] Dick said that he had "started several times to write a sequel" but progressed little, because he was too disturbed by his original research forThe Man in the High Castle and could not mentally bear "to go back and read about Nazis again".[23] He suggested that the sequel would be a collaboration with another author:
Somebody would have to come in and help me do a sequel to it. Someone who had the stomach for the stamina to think along those lines, to get into the head; if you're going to start writing about Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, you have to get into his face. Can you imagine getting into Reinhard Heydrich's face?[23]
Two chapters of the proposed sequel were published inThe Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, a collection of his essays and other writings.[24] Eventually, Dick admitted that the proposed sequel became an unrelated novel,The Ganymede Takeover, co-written withRay Nelson (known for writing the short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" filmed asThey Live).
Dick's novelRadio Free Albemuth is rumored to have started as a sequel toThe Man in the High Castle.[25] Dick described the plot of this early version ofRadio Free Albemuth—then titledVALISystem A—writing:
... a divine and loving ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] ... help[s] Hawthorne Abendsen, the protagonist-author in [The Man in the High Castle], continue on in his difficult life after the Nazi secret police finally got to him ... VALISystem A, located in deep space, sees to it that nothing can prevent Abendsen from finishing his novel.[25]
The novel eventually became a new story unrelated toThe Man in the High Castle.[25] Dick ultimately abandoned theAlbemuth book, unpublished during his lifetime, though portions were salvaged and used for 1981'sVALIS.[25]Radio Free Albemuth was published in 1985, three years after Dick's death.[26]
Belatedly I learned that Philip K. Dick of Point Reyes Station won the Hugo, the 21st World Science Fiction Convention Annual Achievement Award for the best novel of 1962.
man in the high castle cynical.
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