The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Published and set in 1962, the novel takes place fifteen years after a different end to World War II, and depicts intrigues between the victorious Axis Powers—primarily, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany—as they rule over the former United States, as well as daily life under totalitarian rule.

The Man in the High Castle
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
AuthorPhilip K. Dick
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreAlternate history
PublisherPutnam
Publication date
October 1962
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages240
OCLC145507009
813.54

The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Reported inspirations include Ward Moore's alternate Civil War history, Bring the Jubilee (1953), classic World War II histories and the I Ching (referred to in the novel). There is a "novel within the novel", an alternate history within the alternate history where the Allies defeat the Axis (though in a manner distinct from the real-life events of the war).

In 2015, the book was adapted as a multi-season TV series, with Dick's daughter, Isa Dick Hackett, as a producer.

Synopsis

Background

In the novel's alternate history, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara in 1933, leading to the continuation of the Great Depression and US isolationism during the opening of World War II. Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany to successfully capture Austria, Poland, and Czechia. Meanwhile, Imperial Japan conquered Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. The Italians conquered a few Middle Eastern and North African countries, around the Mediterranean Sea, and formed the New Roman Republic. Israel has been made as a self-governing nation, within Italy's empire. As Japan invaded the US West Coast, Germany invaded seven states, from the American South, located in the United States. By late 1945, the US and the remaining Allies surrendered to the Axis, ending the war.

By the 1960s, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's competing superpowers, with Japan establishing the "Pacific States of America" (P.S.A.) from the West Coast of the United States. The PSA compromises of California, Oregon, and Washington. However, Alaska and Hawaii are PSA Territories, rather than states. Sacramento, California serves as the capitol of the PSA. The United States of America still exists, but only in the Northern, Mid-western, and in the Upper Southern States. Washington, D.C. serves as the capitol, of the USA. The Nazis have captured all British Colonies in the Americas, such as British Honduras, and Jamaica.

The South is composed of seven states. Which are Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The Capitol of "The South" is Tampa FL. The South, is a country, ruled by the Nazis. Although the presence of Jews and Negroes are tolerated, it is still a racist regime, that collaborates with the Nazi Government. For unexplained reasons, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and most countries in the world are independent.

During the war, most African countries proclaimed independence. However, Ghana and Nigeria have been made into German Puppet States. Back in 1946, when Japan successfully conquered the British Raj, Pakistan was created. East Pakistan was also given to the Pakistani Republic. India was made independent in 1947, but as a member of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The United Kingdom has lost all it's colonies, to the Nazis and Japanese.

Hitler, though still alive, is incapacitated from advanced syphilis, and Martin Bormann has become the acting Chancellor of Germany, with Goebbels, Heydrich, and other Nazi leaders soon vying to take his place. The Nazis have sent missions, to the Moon, Venus, and Mars. The novel is set mostly in San Francisco. Here, Chinese residents first appear in the novel as second-class citizens, and African Americans as slaves. The secondary setting of the novel is the Rocky Mountains States, namely the cities of Cañon City, Denver and Cheyenne. Click here to see the world map.

Plot summary

In 1962, fifteen years after Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany have won World War II, Robert "Bob" Childan owns an Americana antique shop in San Francisco, California (located in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America), which is most commonly frequented by the Japanese, who make a fetish of romanticized American cultural artifacts. Childan is contacted by Nobusuke Tagomi, a high-ranking Japanese trade official, who is seeking a gift to impress a visiting Swedish industrialist named Baynes. Childan's store is stocked in part with counterfeit antiques from the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, a metalworking company. Frank Frink (formerly Fink), a secretly Jewish-American veteran of World War II, has just been fired from the Wyndam-Matson factory, when he agrees to join a former co-worker to begin a handcrafted jewellery business. Meanwhile, Frink's ex-wife, Juliana, works as a judo instructor in Canon City, Colorado (in the neutral buffer zone of Mountain States), where she begins a sexual relationship with an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier, Joe Cinnadella. Throughout the book, many of these characters frequently make important decisions using prophetic messages they interpret from the I Ching, a Chinese cultural import. Many characters are also reading a widely banned yet extremely popular new novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which depicts an alternate history in which the Allies won World War II in 1945, a concept that amazes and intrigues its readers.

Frink reveals that the Wyndam-Matson Corporation has been supplying Childan with counterfeit antiques, which works to blackmail Wyndam-Matson for money to finance Frink's new jewelry venture. Tagomi and Baynes meet, but Baynes repeatedly delays any real business as they await an expected third party from Japan. Suddenly, the public receives news of the death of the Chancellor of Germany, Martin Bormann, after a short illness. Childan tentatively, on consignment, takes some of Frink's "authentic" new metalwork and attempts to curry favour with a Japanese client, who surprisingly considers Frink's jewelry immensely spiritually alive. Juliana and Joe take a road trip to Denver, Colorado and Joe impulsively decides they should go on a side-trip to meet the mysterious Hawthorne Abendsen, author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, who supposedly lives in a guarded fortress-like estate called the "High Castle" in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Soon, Joseph Goebbels is announced as the new German Chancellor.

Baynes and Tagomi finally meet their Japanese contact as the Nazi secret police, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), close in to arrest Baynes, who is revealed to be a Nazi defector named Rudolf Wegener. Wegener warns his contact, a famed Japanese general, of Operation Dandelion, an upcoming Goebbels-approved plan for the Nazis to launch a surprise attack on the Japanese Home Islands, to obliterate the whole empire for good. As Frink is in Germany, exposed as a Jew and kidnapped, Wegener and Tagomi are confronted by two SD agents, both of whom Tagomi shoots dead with an antique American pistol. Back in Colorado, Joe abruptly changes his appearance and mannerisms before the trip to the High Castle, leading Juliana to infer that he intends to murder Abendsen. Joe confirms this, revealing himself to be an undercover Swiss Nazi assassin. Juliana mortally wounds Joe and drives off to warn Abendsen of the threat to his life.

Wegener flies back to Germany and learns that Reinhard Heydrich (a member of the anti-Dandelion faction) has launched a coup against Goebbels, possibly installing himself as Chancellor. Tagomi remains shaken by the shootout and goes to Childan to sell back the gun he used in the fight; instead, sensing the energy from one of Frink's jewelry items, Tagomi impulsively buys it from Childan. Tagomi then undergoes a spiritually intense experience during which he momentarily perceives an alternative-history version of San Francisco. Later, Tagomi flies to Germany, and rescues Frink, whom Tagomi has never met and does not know is the maker of the jewelry. Juliana soon has her own spiritual experience when she arrives in Cheyenne. She discovers that Abendsen now lives in a normal house with his family, having left behind the High Castle due to a change of outlook; he no longer preoccupies himself with thoughts that he might soon be assassinated. After dodging many of Juliana's questions about his inspiration for his novel, Abendsen finally confesses that he used the I Ching to guide his writing of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Before leaving, Juliana infers then that "Truth" wrote the book in order to reveal the "Inner Truth" that Japan and Germany really lost World War II.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

Several characters in The Man in the High Castle read the popular novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by Hawthorne Abendsen, whose title is assumed or supposed to have come from the Bible[1]:70 verse "The grasshopper shall be a burden" (Ecclesiastes 12:5). Thus, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy constitutes a novel within a novel, wherein Abendsen writes of an alternative universe, where the Axis Powers lost World War II (1939–1945). For this reason, the Germans have banned the novel in The South Regime,[1]:91 but it is widely read in the Pacific States of America, and its publication is legal in the neutral countries.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy postulates that President Roosevelt survives an assassination attempt but forgoes re-election in 1940, honoring George Washington's two-term limit. The next president, Rexford Tugwell, removes the Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, saving it from Japanese attack, which ensures that the US enters the conflict a well-equipped naval power.[1]:70 The United Kingdom retains most of its military-industrial strength, contributing more to the Allied war effort, leading to Rommel's defeat in North Africa; the British advance through the Caucasus to fight alongside the Soviets to victory in the Battle of Stalingrad; Italy and Hungary renege on their membership in the Axis Powers and betray them; British tanks and the Red Army jointly conquer Berlin; at the end of the war, the Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, are tried for their war crimes, and the Führer's last words are Deutsche, hier steh' ich ("Germans, here I stand"),[1]:131 in imitation of Martin Luther.

After the war, President Tugwell initiates the New Deal on a worldwide scale. With American assistance, China goes through a decade of rebuilding. People in lesser developed places in Africa and Asia are sent television kits, through which they learn how to read and receive instructions on practical skills such as digging wells and purifying water. In turn, these places become markets for American factories. There is peace and harmony not only with itself but with the rest of the world. The Soviet Union, crippled by war losses, was divided up.[1]:165–168

Around ten years after the end of the war, the British Empire, still under the leadership of Winston Churchill, becomes increasingly belligerent and anti-American, establishing "detention preserves" for disloyal Chinese in the Republic of India, and suspecting that the U.S. is undermining its rule in its colonies. This starts up tensions between the US and the UK, leading them to a Cold War for global hegemony between their two vaguely liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. The ending is though, never predicted.[1]:169–172

Inspirations

Dick said he conceived The Man in the High Castle when reading Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, which occurs mainly in an alternative 20th-century US wherein the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War. In the acknowledgments to the book, he mentions other influences: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), by William L. Shirer; Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952), by Alan Bullock; The Goebbels Diaries (1948), Louis P. Lochner, translator; Foxes of the Desert (1960), by Paul Carrell; and the 1950 translation of the I Ching by Richard Wilhelm.[2][1]

The acknowledgments have three references to traditional Japanese and Tibetan poetic forms; (i) volume one of the Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955), edited by Donald Keene, from which is cited the haiku on page 48; (ii) from Zen and Japanese Culture (1955), by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, from which is cited a waka on page 135; and (iii) the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1960), edited by Walter Evans-Wentz.

Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)[3] is also mentioned in the text,[1]:118 written before the Roosevelt assassination divergence separating the world of The Man in the High Castle from ours. In this novella, "Miss Lonelyhearts" is a male newspaper journalist who writes anonymous advice as an agony aunt to forlorn readers during the height of the Great Depression; hence, "Miss Lonelyhearts" tries to find consolation in religion, casual sex, rural vacations, and work, none of which provide him with the sense of authenticity and engagement with the outside world that he needs. West's book is about the elusive quality of relationships and quest for meaning at a time of political turmoil within the United States.

Philip Dick used the I Ching to make decisions crucial to the plot of The Man in the High Castle just as characters within the novel use it to guide decisions.[2]

Reception

Avram Davidson praised the novel as a "superior work of fiction", citing Dick's use of the I 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 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.[5][6][7] In a review of a paperback reprint of the novel, Robert Silverberg wrote in Amazing Stories magazine, "Dick's prose crackles with excitement, his characters are vividly real, his plot is stunning."[8]

In The 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]

A trade paperback edition of the novel was published in 1992 by Vintage Books.[10]

Adaptations

Audiobook

An unabridged The Man in the High Castle audiobook, read by George Guidall and running approximately 9.5 hours over seven audio cassettes, was released in 1997.[11] Another unabridged audiobook version was released in 2008 by Blackstone Audio, read by Tom Wyner (credited as Tom Weiner) and running approximately 8.5 hours over seven CDs.[12][13] A third unabridged audiobook recording was released in 2014 by Brilliance Audio, read by Jeff Cummings with a running time of 9 hours 58 minutes.[14]

Television
Main article: The Man in the High Castle (TV series)

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 of The Man in the High Castle in Roslyn, Washington, for release through the Amazon Prime Web video streaming service.[15][16] The pilot episode was released by Amazon 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]

Incomplete sequel

In a 1976 interview, Dick said he planned to write a sequel novel to The 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 for The 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 in The 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 with Ray Nelson (known for writing the short story filmed as They Live).

Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth is rumored to have started as a sequel to The Man in the High Castle.[25] Dick described the plot of this early version of Radio Free Albemuth—then titled VALISystem 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 to The Man in the High Castle.[25] Dick ultimately abandoned the Albemuth book, unpublished during his lifetime, though portions were salvaged and used for 1981's VALIS.[25] Radio Free Albemuth was published in 1985, three years after Dick's death.[26]

See also

References
  1. Dick, Philip K. (2011). The Man in the High Castle (1st Mariner Books ed.). Boston: Mariner Books. p. ix-x. ISBN 9780547601205. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  2. Cover, Arthur Byron (February 1974). "Interview with Philip K. Dick". Vertex. 1 (6). Retrieved July 23, 2014.
  3. West, Nathanael (1933) Miss Lonelyhearts, New York, N.Y.: Liveright Publ.
  4. Davidson, Avram (June 1963). "Books". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: 61.
  5. "Philip K. Dick, Won Awards For Science-Fiction Works". The New York Times. March 3, 1982. Retrieved March 30, 2010.
  6. "1963 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
  7. Wyatt, Fred (November 7, 1963). "A Brisk Bathrobe Canter At Cry Of 'Fire!' Stirs Blood". I-J Reporter's Notebook. Daily Independent Journal. San Rafael, California. Retrieved October 25, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. 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.
  8. Silverberg, Robert (June 1964). "The Spectroscope". Amazing Stories. 38 (6): 124. Retrieved January 30, 2021.
  9. Kreuziger, Frederick A. (1986). In The Religion of Science Fiction. Popular Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780879723675. Retrieved July 27, 2016. man in the high castle cynical.
  10. Staff (July 26, 1992). "New in Paperback". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 2, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015 – via HighBeam Research.
  11. Willis, Jesse (May 29, 2003). "Review of The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick". SFFaudio. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  12. "The Man in the High Castle". BlackstoneAudio.com. Archived from the original on August 9, 2010. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  13. L.B. "Audiobook review: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, read by Tom Weiner". audiofilemagazine.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  14. The Man in the High Castle. Audible, Inc.
  15. Muir, Pat (October 5, 2014). "Roslyn hopes new TV show brings 15 more minutes of fame". Yakima Herald. Retrieved March 28, 2017.
  16. Andreeva, Nellie (July 24, 2014). "Amazon Studios Adds Drama 'The Man In The High Castle', Comedy 'Just Add Magic' To Pilot Slate". Deadline. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  17. "The Man in the High Castle: Season 1, Episode 1". Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  18. "The Man in the High Castle". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
  19. Lewis, Hilary (February 18, 2015). "Amazon Orders 5 New Series Including 'Man in the High Castle'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  20. Robertson, Adi (February 18, 2015). "Amazon green-lights The Man in the High Castle TV series". The Verge. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  21. Moylan, Brian (November 18, 2015). "Does The Man in the High Castle prove that the best TV is now streamed?". The Guardian. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  22. "Hour 25: A Talk With Philip K. Dick « Philip K. Dick Fan Site". Philipkdickfans.com. June 26, 1976. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  23. RC, Lord (2006). Pink Beam: A Philip K. Dick Companion (1st ed.). Ward, Colorado: Ganymedean Slime Mold Pubs. p. 106. ISBN 9781430324379. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  24. Dick, Philip K. (1995). "Part 3. Works Related to 'The Man in the High Castle' and its Proposed Sequel". In Sutin, Lawrence (ed.). The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-679-74787-7.
  25. Pfarrer, Tony. "A Possible Man in the High Castle Sequel?". Willis E. Howard, III Home Page. Archived from the original on August 19, 2008. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  26. "LC Online Catalog — Item Information (Full Record)". Catalog.loc.gov. Retrieved December 10, 2015.

Further reading
  • Brown, William Lansing. 2006. "alternative Histories: Power, Politics, and Paranoia in Philip Roth's The Plot against America and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle", The Image of Power in Literature, Media, and Society: Selected Papers, 2006 Conference, Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery. Wright, Will; Kaplan, Steven (eds.); Pueblo, CO: Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, Colorado State University-Pueblo; pp. 107–11.
  • Campbell, Laura E. 1992. "Dickian Time in The Man in the High Castle", Extrapolation, 33: 3, pp. 190–201.
  • Carter, Cassie, 1995. "The Metacolonization of Dick's The Man in the High Castle: Mimicry, Parasitism and Americanism in the PSA", Science Fiction Studies #67, 22:3, pp. 333–342.
  • DiTommaso, Lorenzo, 1999. "Redemption in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle", Science Fiction Studies # 77, 26:, pp. 91–119, DePauw University.
  • Fofi, Goffredo 1997. "Postfazione", Philip K. Dick, La Svastica sul Sole, Roma, Fanucci, pp. 391–5.
  • Hayles, N. Katherine 1983. "Metaphysics and Metafiction in The Man in the High Castle", Philip K. Dick. Greenberg, M.H.; Olander, J.D. (eds.); New York: Taplinger, 1983, pp. 53–71.
  • Malmgren, Carl D. 1980. "Philip Dick's The Man in the High Castle and the Nature of Science Fictional Worlds", Bridges to Science Fiction. Slusser, George E.; Guffey, George R.; Rose, Mark (eds.); Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 120–30.
  • Mountfort, Paul 2016. "The I Ching and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle", Science-Fiction Studies # 129, 43:, pp. 287–309.
  • Pagetti, Carlo, 2001a. "La svastica americana" [Introduction], Philip K. Dick, L'uomo nell'alto castello, Roma: Fanucci, pp. 7–26.
  • Proietti, Salvatore, 1989. "The Man in The High Castle: politica e metaromanzo", Il sogno dei simulacri. Pagetti, Carlo; Viviani, Gianfranco (eds.); Milano: Nord, 1989 pp. 34–41.
  • Rieder, John 1988. "The Metafictive World of The Man in the High Castle: Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Political Ideology", Science-Fiction Studies # 45, 15.2: 214-25.
  • Rossi, Umberto, 2000. "All Around the High Castle: Narrative Voices and Fictional Visions in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle", Telling the Stories of America — History, Literature and the Arts — Proceedings of the 14th AISNA Biennial conference (Pescara, 1997), Clericuzio, A.; Goldoni, Annalisa; Mariani, Andrea (eds.); Roma: Nuova Arnica, pp. 474–83.
  • Simons, John L. 1985. "The Power of Small Things in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle". The Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 39:4, pp. 261–75.
  • Warrick, Patricia, 1992. "The Encounter of Taoism and Fascism in The Man in the High Castle", On Philip K. Dick, Mullen et al. (eds.); Terre Haute and Greencastle: SF-TH Inc. 1992, pp. 27–52.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.