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Philip K. Dick
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The Man in the High Castle Paperback – June 30 1992

by Philip K. Dick (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 20,337 ratings
3.6 on Goodreads
220,323 ratings
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It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. the few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.
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  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    June 30 1992
  5. Dimensions
    13.06 x 1.52 x 20.19 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0679740678
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679740674
  8. See all details
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  1. Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small . . . and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
    Highlighted by 3,060 Kindle readers
  2. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up.
    Highlighted by 2,947 Kindle readers
  3. It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place. Not governed and governing, but people.
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Product description

Review

Dick began writing in the 1950s, a decade haunted by the Cold War and a decade which witnessed the blossoming of science fiction. While this form of literature was already haunting the margins of culture as early as 1926, when Hugo Gernsback identified it as "scientifiction", it was the terror of science gone mad-the atomic bomb-that gave science fiction its first, heroin-like shot in the arm.
In some ways the fear of nuclear war is just another expression of a theme that has seized the attention of literary theorists, philosophers and social scientists alike: how stable is "reality"? This is the great postmodern question, which has led theorists like Jean Baudrillard to conclude that even protests against the current multinational consumer system are programmed by the system, Michel Foucault to argue that the totalitarian momentum of this system seeks to colonize that last refuges of human freedom, one of these being our unconscious minds, and Daniel Bell to open up the possibility that the consumption of images and simulacra will continue to the point where "reality" may be nothing more than a series of products that one can purchase.
The Man in the High Castle novel presented the ultimate hallucinatory reality for the 20th century-a reality in which the Axis powers won World War II. Into this world, which Dick peoples with memorable characters, comes a novel written by a man who supposedly lives in a defended compound-the High Castle-in the nominally independent Rocky Mountain States. This novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, portrays a reality which powerfully affects everyone who reads it: a reality in which the Axis lost the war. Dick deepens the sense of dislocation for his characters and for the readers when the death of Reichschancellor Martin Bormann unleashes a power struggle in the Reich that will affect top secret Operation Dandelion-the planned nuclear attack on the Japanese Home Islands. To his horror, the Japanese Consul in San Francisco, Tagomi, discovers that the only leadership candidate opposed to Dandelion is Reinhard Heydrich, head of the dreaded S.D., and to save itself Japan must support the evil of the black uniform-an evil which has completed the holocaust in Europe and demands the surrender of Jews even in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America; an evil which has exterminated the black population of Africa in fifteen years. Tagomi literally becomes ill at discovering the reality of evil and concludes that humans are insects "...groping toward something terrible or divine." Tagomi manages to perform one small moral action-refusing to accede to a German request to extradite Jew Frank Frink from the P.S.A. to the Reich, and this action is echoed by Wegener, a representative of a German faction trying to thwart Dandelion: "We can only control the end by making a choice at each step."
The novel ends with Frink's wife Juliana discovering that the real "author" of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the I-Ching and that the novel is actually the "truth"-Germany and Japan lost the war. While this realization does not heal her reality-save for the fact that her journey has prompted her to want to rejoin her husband-it stands as a symbol that transcends the book and speaks directly to the reader. The Man in the High Castle is thus, itself, an assault on reality-a work of fiction's internal reality. The reader of 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, cannot help but feel that, despite its terrors, the Cold War is inevitable and preferable to the only historical alternative that could have prevented it.
Patrick R. Burger (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reissue edition (June 30 1992)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679740678
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679740674
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 227 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.06 x 1.52 x 20.19 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 20,337 ratings

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Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

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Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film; notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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Top reviews from Canada

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Cool version
Reviewed in Canada on April 22, 2023
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Nice version of the novel.
One person found this helpful
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Buttilione
4.0 out of 5 stars Fair quality
Reviewed in Canada on February 24, 2024
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Cheap paper, cheap printing but clean layout. Easily readable. As for the content, I'm not a literary critic so I wont comment. I myself enjoyed it.
2 people found this helpful
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Eyedoc86
3.0 out of 5 stars Weird
Reviewed in Canada on May 22, 2020
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A fairly weird book, with an ambiguous ending. I read this after watching the Amazon Prime series of the same name. You can tell the show was based on the book, but in truth the series was MUCH more interesting. Not sure why this book rates high on SF Best lists.
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Peter A. Arnott
5.0 out of 5 stars Speedy Delivery and Excellent Condition
Reviewed in Canada on June 30, 2019
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I look forward to reading this, having seen the video on my tablet.
The written word can sometimes be better in some ways than a movie, giving more details and more background.
One person found this helpful
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Dale
2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected
Reviewed in Canada on July 18, 2019
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Considering the amount of praise that is heaped upon stories and novels by Mr. Dick, I expected much more from this book. The writing style is somewhat jarring to me; too much use of non-standard grammar and sentence structure. There is also, seemingly, no point to some of the story lines and characters as they are only remotely related to the primary story line. I can appreciate the greater questions that the other characters and their stories are exploring but they don't add to the experience for me.
I will admit that the show has likely tainted my opinion somewhat but that doesn't make it any less jarring.
2 people found this helpful
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Nancy Grégoire
4.0 out of 5 stars Auteur à découvrir!
Reviewed in Canada on February 2, 2018
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Il s'agit de ma première lecture d'un roman de M. Dick et je trouve la prémisse excellente. Le monde qu'il imagine est assez près du nôtre, sauf que, Alerte Spoil, nous sommes envahis par les Nazis et les Japonais. J'ai commencé par écouter la série, quand j'avais accès à prime vidéo, et maintenant me voilà en train de lire le livre. M. Dick ne manque pas d'imagination! Pas étonnant qu'il soit l'un des plus grands auteurs de science-fiction!
3 people found this helpful
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Ken Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent historical science fiction
Reviewed in Canada on June 12, 2019
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A great book, high in ideas and concepts but also great with details.
3 people found this helpful
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CS
3.0 out of 5 stars I do like Philip K
Reviewed in Canada on October 24, 2016
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I wasn't a fan of the writing style in this book. I do like Philip K. Dick, so it's not him, it was just this particular book. Very disjointed; the writing style and disconnect took away from the storyline for me. I liked the premise, and I get it... I just didn't love it, unfortunately. I was really looking forward to this one and I really had to force myself to get through it.
4 people found this helpful
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Fernando A V
5.0 out of 5 stars Todo bien
Reviewed in Mexico on November 2, 2024
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Vi la serie y compré el libro, todo bien hasta ahora, es Phillip K. Dick osea que es calidad…
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Henrique Sodre
5.0 out of 5 stars Muito bom
Reviewed in Brazil on December 20, 2022
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Henrique Sodre
5.0 out of 5 stars Muito bom
Reviewed in Brazil on December 20, 2022

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VS NARAYAN
5.0 out of 5 stars Imagine parallel worlds
Reviewed in India on October 29, 2020
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The author leaves you in the cold at the very end of the book. Interesting to know about I Ching , which was used by all characters in the plot except the Nazi's
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Matteo
5.0 out of 5 stars The Man In The High Castle
Reviewed in Italy on May 30, 2020
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Cosa sarebbe successo se l'Asse avesse vinto la Seconda Guerra Mondiale? Philip Dick, nel suo romanzo, cerca di dare una spiegazione abbastanza plausibile dei fatti.
Se siete qui sicuramente avrete visto la serie TV su Amazon Prime ma il libro e la serie sono molto diverse, nonostante ciò resta un romanzo piacevole ed interessante.

Ad esempio alcuni personaggi principali della serie come l'Obergruppenführer John Smith non è presente nel romanzo, i caratteri e la psicologie dei personaggi sono diversi rispetto alla serie (a differenza di Childan che nel romanzo sembra essere il personaggio più importante insieme a Mr. Tagomi). Ma la differenza principale sono l'oggetto che mostra la realtà alternativa: nella serie sono dei cinegiornali mentre nel libro dei "libri proibiti".
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Different but good
Reviewed in Australia on November 27, 2019
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I've only just finished and my head is still spinning about the end a bit. I really enjoyed reading the book but I still need to think about what it's all about.
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