SCI FI PI

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
By Philip K.Dick

With the release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut to the home entertainment market on December 19, the world will once again cast its eyes over Philip K.Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep, the book that spawned an audiovisual phenomenon. However, let’s save that one for a rainy day and have a look at another of Dick’s novels, passed on from generation to generation as one of the coolest books ever written.

First, for the newbies, a little about Dick. The ‘K’ stands for Kindred. Astonishingly, he went to High School with another Sci Fi titan, Ursula K. Le Guin (more about her later) in Berkely, California. He sold his first story in 1952, first novel in 1955. Dick is generally regarded as a true genius, touched by madness, and his works blend psychological investigation with astonishingly adept forays into alternate (and often alternating) realities. Drug use is a theme that emerges in his later works. Later on in life Dick suffered from paranoia and schizophrenia, which is reflected in his final novels. He died in 1982.

If you’re interested in the Alternate History genre, The Man in the High Castle should be your first novel. It is the touchstone for all other alternate history books. It is set in 1962, the same year it was written, in a world where the Axis have won World War II, and the world is run between the now restive superpowers of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, locked in a cold war.

In this timeline, Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated before the events of WWII, America remains isolationist and does not enter the war. Japan takes over Australia and New Zealand, and the Nazis invade the US. It is divided in half, with Germany controlling the New York and the east, and Japan Los Angeles and the west.

With Nazis continuing their rocketry programs begun during the war, they have explored the Moon, Venus and Mars.

Several of the characters read a novel in the novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an alternate history novel that outlines a world where the Nazis lost the war. It’s not our history though, but another one completely, where The British Empire emerges as the dominant world power. The author of this forbidden novel is Hawthorne Abendsen, who lives, if the stories are true, in a secret, well guarded fortress. He is The Man in The High Castle.

When it comes to ‘what if?’ books, Dick’s novel is a revelation. The writing is elegant and efficient, showing a polish often lacking in his later works, and it shies away from cliché. The audacity of his mind is what captures, and then lingers. It is this audacity that turns ordinary Sci Fi fans into Philip K. Dick fans.

The book was a huge success and was greeted enthusiastically by Sci Fi fans, making Dick’s name. It was awarded Dick’s first and only Hugo Award for Science Fiction in 1963. It is now considered not just a classic of the genre, but of all fiction.


Cool Book Covers for The Man in the High Castle.



MOVIES BASED ON PHILIP K. DICK NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

Blade Runner (1982)
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Screamers (1995)
"Second Variety"

Total Recall (1990)
"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"

Confessions d'un Barjo (French, 1992)
"Confessions of a Crap Artist"

Impostor (2001)
"Impostor."

Minority Report (2002)
"The Minority Report."

Paycheck (2003)
"Paycheck."

A Scanner Darkly (2006)
“A Scanner Darkly"

Next (2007)
"The Golden Man"