The Man in the High Castle …

Gripped. I’m so involved in this book I’m on chapter 12 and I’m only just finding time to write a thing about the book. Every page I turn seems to bring up new, interesting, unexpected occurrences.

The book is set 17 years after the end of WWII, instantly an interesting shift from reading about the future to reading about the past. But the novel is far from ‘historical’, it explores a sort of ‘alternative reality’, a different time line in which the Nazi’s won WWI and the Axis were beaten. The concept itself is incredibly grabbing. It is human nature to ponder upon such things. The usual phrase I have heard time and time again considering the prospect is ‘Oh you want to be thankful, we’d all be speaking German right now if we hadn’t won!’, but (as usual) PKD takes this notion to a whole new level and makes the frivolous concerns about linguistics appear pathetic in comparison. He explores what would have happened after the war, how it was lost and touches on the shattering consequences of Hitler ruling the world. Emotive as ever his occasional mentioning of ‘Africa’ was sickening, yet most likely a realistic assumption of what Hitler’s actions would have been had he ruled the world. Although the book does look at the grand scheme of things and how the world was divided between Germany and Japan (clearly drawing many parallels between actual events) it focuses on the lives of specific characters and how their world is affected by the changes still.
One element which thus far has brought a great grin to my face whenever I ponder it is the title itself. ‘The Man in the High Castle’ at first it seemed just as bizarre as ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’, but once again as the book progressed things became clearer (and I feel that they will come clearer still.).

The title is taken from an author in the book, Abendsen, who wrote the popular underground novel ‘The Grasshopper lies Heavy’ which appears as a book within a book. The book is controversial (and banned) and explores what reality would have been if the Axis had won the war and the Nazi’s had lost (as they really did). Humorously, Dick has created essentially a character of himself within his own novel, pondering on the opposite outcome of the war and writing about it. There is a paradoxical feel about this element which I love, An author writing about an alternative reality in which an author is writing about his alternative reality. Naturally Dick avoids the pitfall of writing exactly what happened in our reality in the extracts of ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’, he approaches it from an idealistic point of view, as a perfect utopia. More to the point, the author lives in a fort called the ‘High Castle’, hence the title of the book.

As it stands I’m hoping (and expecting) that the various different story strands will converge into one, connecting together the plot into some grand scheme. That’s the feeling I’m getting, but Dick’s always throwing up surprises and oddities, which just makes for a more exciting read.