"THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE" by Philip K. Dick

"The Man in the High Castle" is set in a world where FDR was assassinated prior to WWII, and as a result Germany and Japan won the war. Now, nearly two decades after the close of the war, the United States has been divided into a Japanese-controlled Pacific Territory, the "Rocky Mountain States" and the Nazi-Controlled USA east of the Mississippi.

The book tells the story of several loosely-linked lives in this strange parallel reality. We see the lives of occupied Americans, Japanese businessmen, and German officials. The interesting viewpoint of the story is that nothing cataclysmic is happening throughout. The story really just shows us a snapshot of these people as they've come to terms with the way the world is. Jews change their names so as not to be identified as such, American businessmen try to cash in on the Japanese love of pre-war Americana "antiques" - such as Mickey Mouse watches and Civil War-era revolvers, and the Japanese struggle between their disgust of the Nazi war machine and their admiration for German technology. German consulate officals deal with the everyday inter-parteii politics as they man their posts in Japanese-controlled San Francisco.

I want to make two specific observations about this book. First of all, in his unflinching exploration of his supposition, Dick makes you realize just how much the reality of our world hinges on specific events. What if FDR had been assassinated and an inept president, a president unable to deal with the reality of a world war, was voted into power? This all made me think of the ubiquitous "chaos theory." Everything is interconnected, and chains of events are set in motion moment by moment. It's a daunting thought, and one that's plagued my mind throughout the reading of this novel... and will undoubtedly continue to for some time to come as a result.

Secondly, I'd like to comment on Dick's apparent mastery of language as a whole. Whether some of this was implied, or created out of accident, I have no idea. The speech patterns he gives his Japanese characters could be termed stereotypical, (the book was published in 1962) but what's interesting is he lends a slightly less obvious stereotypically Japanese speech pattern to those non-Japanese characters that have been under Japanese occupation - even amping up those patterns when particular characters are under a great deal of stress. I at first attributed this to Dick having these patterns so woven into his mind that he was just carrying them over a bit into other characters, however, the more I read, I realized that characters that weren't under Japanese control, those in the Rocky Mountain States, for example, weren't speaking with the 'accents'. That realization made, I began looking for the patterns, appreciating the complexity of the language in the prose.

"The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick is definitely a must-read for any fan of speculative fiction, and receives my highest recommendation.

Rated 5 out of 5

(Originally reviewed in "The Daily Cave" on September 13th, 2006)