In Philip K. Dick’s alternate history novel, the Allies have lost WWII and the United States is divided up between Nazi Germany to the east and the Empire of Japan in the west. Between the two territories is a neutral zone straddling the Rocky Mountain States. It’s 1962 and the Chancellor of Nazi Germany, Martin Bormann, has just died, leaving several high-ranking Nazi officers to jockey for power including Reinhard Heydrich, Joseph Goebbels, and others.

In the Japanese-controlled Pacific Western States, Rudolf Wegener (traveling under the name Baynes) defects from Nazi Germany to meet with a sympathetic Japanese General. There, Wegener reveals Operation Dandelion, Germany’s plans to attack the Japanese Home Islands. The meeting is held in the office of Trade Minister Tagomi in San Francisco, which is raided by an armed German militia assigned to kill Wegener.

Meanwhile, machinist Frank Frink teams up with a co-worker to form their own business making hand-wrought metal jewelry. They plan to peddle their wares to a few local shops, starting with the largest antique shop in town owned by Robert Childan. Reluctant at first, Childan accepts the jewelry on a consignment deal but uses one of the pieces to curry favor with a young Japanese couple. He also sells a piece to Mr. Tagomi who later experiences a strange vision of an alternate San Francisco.

In the neutral zone, Frink’s ex-wife, Julianna, is a Judo instructor and has been dating a truck driver named Joe Cinnandella. Julianna is engrossed in a popular novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in which the United States and Britain have won WWII and now dominate the world. So compelling is the story that Julianna convinces Joe to drive her to Cheyenne, Wyoming to visit the author, a man named Abendsen. Along the way, she learns that Joe is not who he seems.

Throughout the story, Mr. Tagomi and other characters in San Francisco consult the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination, to guide their decisions and foretell the future.

Overall, The Man in the High Castle is a fascinating idea of what would have become of the United States had the Axis powers won the war. The oppression and fear experienced by the characters is palatable as each of them struggles for the best existence they can manage given their circumstances. ( )

Lido ( )

(1962) Confusing book with a great premise. The Allies have lost WW2, and the Germans & Japanese are now contentious allies. Nuclear war is threatened and small events seem to have global impact. What is reality? KIRKUS REVIEWThe teratological curiosity of the American reading public, whetted and abetted by the press, could have made this novel a sure best seller. Consider the premises upon which Mr. Dick bases his book. They are fascinating: What if the Axis powers had won World War II? What if Germany and Japan had divided after conquering in 1947...Capitulation Day it is called? He takes the hypothesis one step further. It is fifteen years later... 1962. Africa is a "huge empty ruin" sacrificed to Nazi Medicare. The Mediterranean sea has been entirely drained, converted to tillable land. The "blond queens", the "near men" of the Gestapo have found a new use for the big toe. San Francisco is occupied by the Japanese. Old Adolph is in some sanitarium with syphilis of the brain and Martin Borman, heretofore the top man, has just died leaving the Axis powers with a choice among Goebbels, Heydrich, Goehring von Schirach and a couple of other cuties. How did the author turn this projected cosmos into a hinterland where only confusion and boredom reside for the reader? The Man in the High Castle is overpeopled, spattered with telegraphic dialogue simply absurd (A Japanese suicide says to his Colt .22 "Cough up arcane secret".) Finally, there is riddled throughout a quasi-mystique, a pseudo-religious leit motif relating to an Eastern machine that answers questions when asked. This one could be pushed solely on subject-matter. But it will disappoint greatly.Pub Date: Oct. 15th, 1962ISBN: 0679740678Page count: 276ppPublisher: PutnamReview Posted Online: Sept. 22nd, 2011Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1st, 1962

This is the sixth book I've read by this author and of the five I finished (Valis was unreadable), this is probably his weakest. Much like most of his books, the blurb reads an incredible premise; here WW2 was lost by the Allies and the world is under the crushing foot of fascism, with America divided up between Germany and Japan. In amongst it all appears a book which tells of how the Axis powers lost and perhaps everything is not quite as it seems..

Except this is not what this story is about. The book "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" which is supposed to lie at the centre of all this and is at times read by various characters as part of various political discussions, is mostly an afterthought until the end. The "Man in the High Castle" himself has virtually no appearance until the final couple of pages and the book itself doesn't even describe our reality, but an alternate version of our own world where the Allies are torn between savior or fascism as they dominate everyone else. The point of all this is never explained nor is it clearly linked into what else is going on. The danger to in-story society and why it is banned forms no real part.

Whilst I like the idea of a speculative book inside another speculative book, any attempt to make a story from it has been eschewed. I was hoping for a story about how two world's diverged and how an author discovered the true reality and uses it to bring down society and restore it to a path of civilisation. I couldn't have been further away in my expectations.

As to what else is going, the rest is mostly a mess. The narratives follow several characters from different backgrounds all trying to find their own way in the world, guided by internal discussions of philosophy, possession and the use of I Ching; the latter of which gets a lot of page time, but doesn't go far enough in exploring the core idea of how yin and yang could connect two separate realities - which would have been extremely clever. In fairness, there are some interesting sections here. The bleak alternate world is very well developed and quite terrifying to imagine. Learning about I Ching/The Oracle was something new to me and I was fascinated by the exploration of how "historicity" inherent in items makes them valuable to others. But again none of this leads anywhere as the author descends into ever increasing levels of gibberish in his writing and dialogue. The germination of a thought provoking idea at the end unfortunately comes too late and too isolated to mean much.

Another incomprehensible and poor outing from one of the so-called grandmasters of the speculative science fiction genre. How it won any award is beyond me - 1963 was clearly a poor year. Watch the TV series - this takes the potential behind the concepts presented and makes a genuinely gripping and harrowing story out of it. ( )

This was a fast and fairly gripping read, and definitely though-provoking (if not a bit confusing). At the same time, not the best of PKD that I've read nor of fiction in general. Worth a read though, considering it's a quick one. ( )