The Man in the High Castle (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

This is PKD's most mainstream, and in many ways his most approachable, published work. It is a wonderful analysis of how ordinary Americans might have behaved under totalitarian rule. There is a power vacuum created by the death of Martin Boorman, but the wider political picture remains a backdrop to the inter-connected stories of a selection of "average joes", all of whom are masterfully characterised. As a nod to the "science fiction" categorisation of the book, at the core of the tale is a bestselling, underground book written by a man who supposedly lives in a high castle in the Rockies, and which is a work of alternative history about how the Allies won the war - is it possible that reality could have been changed in some way? Intriguingly, even the alternative history presented in this book-within-a-book is substantially different to our own received history.

As ever with PKD, there are ambiguities everywhere and no definite resolution, not least to the identity of "the Man in the High Castle" and what his book represents. As previous reviewers have said, this novel examines ideas of oppression, colonialism, and the loss of cultural identity. It is a sometimes bleak work, but not without hope and some typical PKD black humour. This edition, with an insightful introduction, rightly presents the novel as a modern classic.

Several very different characters (presumably demonstrating a wide enough variety of this world's social structure) will interact with each other and undergo radical changes, all in their personal efforts to make sense of their existence.

This 1962 novel gained Philip Dick a Hugo award, which he subsequently used to stop a fight in his garden. Thematically, it includes many of the author's obsessive subjects, like alternate realities, socio-financial positioning, relationships, depression, future Vs. the past (all this is put rather bluntly as to not give too much away), though, admittedly, the characters' use of addictive substances is minimal.

Uncharacteristically, though, the setting is brought on, explained in great detail, and never ceases to be a factor to everything that happens (or fails to) in the story. This is a far cry from most of Philip Dick's books, where the "working environment" is only used to explain the particular characters' behaviours and choices, and then focuses on them. In "The man in the High Castle", the world is described in great detail from beginning to end, and the particular events that led to the Allies' defeat are so plausible and well explained as to give anybody a sudden 'close call' panic attack.

In addittion to the above, the novel's wide range of characters are all very deeply carved by the author's obvious empathic demeanour. This is (I think) the first of Dick's novels featuring a different person's perspective per chapter, and it seems to serve the purpose well, though he never really adopted it as a personal style (the same writing style is demonstrated on "The simulacra", a story with more characters, thicker plot, but somewhat shallower).

I tend to believe it was the actual explanation to the different WWII outcome that the Hugo award was rewarded for in this case, though I find the character development therein the most notable. This is definitely not a typical Philip K. Dick book, but rather his best authoring traits put together. The obvious labour involved in its writing (the historical and cultural research as well as trying to make out and tie together the I-Ching hints that indicated how the story should proceed) eventually paid out by the creation of a true landmark of an uncertain era and one of the first science fiction works to command literary acclaim.

This is a superb story, richly deserving of its Hugo award, which immerses the reader in a believable alternate world without having to overdo descriptive narrative or details. The sense of angst and day-to-day struggles of our characters in an alternate moral system invite us to experience this other world in a personal sense rather than as merely an abstract concept.

Along with 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' and 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch', I would have to rate this as one of PKD's best works.