On Wednesday I found myself at a party (an occurrence itself worthy of remark) at which everyone wore "I'm currently reading..." stickers, so I had several opportunities to explain why I was loving The Man in the High Castle. One such conversation went like this:"So what's that about?""Well, it's scifi. Or rather speculative fiction.""Er, hm. No. I don't do scifi.""But it's got Nazis!""Oh my god I love Nazis!"Another conversation involved me explaining to a white guy how interesting I (a half-Ja...

2 stars.I was disappointed with this book; it ended up going nowhere. Perhaps there was simply too much “other stuff” besides the plot (like the Zen and Eastern mysticism) in it to make it a worthwhile read for me. It seemed like an overwhelmingly large number characters constantly consult the I Ching for guidance, which has no appeal to me whatsoever.Okay, speaking of plot, or lack thereof. The book takes place in Japanese-controlled western United States (The United States lost World War II, a...

[Original review, Feb 22 2016]DISCLAIMER: It would evidently be irresponsible to call Donald Trump a Nazi merely on the strength of a recent speech in which he suggested it would be desirable to shoot Muslims using bullets dipped in pig's blood. A more plausible interpretation is that this is no more than the result of dispassionately calculating that the upside in terms of increasing his attractiveness to the ignorant racist demographic is larger than the downside in terms of decreasing his app...

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.” If Franklin Delano Roo...

the plot is simple enough: an alternate history detailing what would've happened had the axis powers won the second world war. thankfully, there's very little of that obvious government intrigue and new-world-order shit that lesser writers focus on -- rather, Dick's obsession is the spiritual life of the individual in a totalitarian society told in the form of a wonderfully messy jumble of ideas and ruminations on race and history and human connection and destiny. in fact, i think dick's ideas a...

Hermann Göring, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany after Hitler, fancied himself an art collector and scoured Europe to acquire masterpieces. In 1945, his collection was seized by the Allies while he was on trial at Nuremberg. Among many other works of art, they found The Supper at Emmaus, signed by Johannes Vermeer, Göring’s favourite. The origin of that painting was then traced back to a Dutch art dealer named Han van Meegeren, who consequently was arrested and charged with the crime...

An impressive tale from a world building point of view as PKD shows his vision of a world where the Axis, Germany, Japan and Italy won the Second World War; there's some very rewarding world building, and a pretty good tale of intrigue, metaphysics and the nature of defeated peoples and nations. PKD takes a thought provoking look at the Japanese psyche as well. A highly recommend PKD jam! 8 out of 12.

I think this book broke my brain.I mean, it's so many things tied up in a slim little volume - an alt-history "what if Germany and Japan had won the Second World War," a meditation on the inability to ever accurately try to reconstruct what-might-have-beens, one of the most interesting literary experiments I've ever read, a look at chance and fate in how the world unfolds, and a book that can definitely bend your sense of reality.Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent...

3 1/2 starsScientifically and politically, this is absolute genius. The way Philip K. Dick masterfully rewrites history and portrays this alternate United States is quite incredible and I can easily see why the guy has such a huge following. That being said, while this novel is undeniably clever, I think what it lacks is a human touch. I found it hard to care about any of the mishmash of characters, which for me means that I ultimately found it hard to care about the direction of the story and i...

Dick, did you really just wasted a perfect plot by endlessly driveling about pseudo philosophical deeper meaning of art while being unable to establish other plotlines, any major action, suspense, believable characters with comprehensible motivations to let the mess culminate, again, in just ending the novel in the middle of nowhere without anything, resolution, explanation, maybe an excuse for publishing something like that?This thing is truly completely overrated, the weaknesses of Dicks´writi...

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, is classic, very good science fiction. It is the story of a segmented and defeated United States after the Axis powers won World War II. This alternate history actually began in the thirties as Roosevelt is described as having been assassinated. Taking a roving perspective amidst several characters and some loosely connected interwoven storylines, PKD explores a world where America is divided into three distin...

The Man in the High Castle is what I like to call a great ideas book, a book that has a brilliantly intelligent idea but is delivered with all the excitement of a potato. It’s dull. And there’s no getting round that. The characters are boring, and they have boring little lives that I don’t care about. It lacks a certain level of emotion and human interest which meant I could not invest in the story. I had no interest in the outcome which meant reading became rather pointless. I love speculative...

Philip K Dick was certainly a brilliant man and a gifted writer. His imagined dystopia of a world split between the victorious Reich and Imperial Japan is chilling and realistic. Ok, perhaps colonisation of Mars in 1962 is a bit of a stretch, but the depiction of San Francisco under the Japanese administration was excellent. His characters were vivid and lifelike. His villain was somewhat predicable, but still a fascinating one. The dystopia he describes - particularly the horrors of unbridled f...

have you ever thought about what life would be like had the axis powers won WWII? a world where every morning begins with a 'heil, hitler' and the 'i ching' is consulted for every decision? because i sure havent. at least, not until i read this book. i actually didnt even know alternative history was a thing when it came to genres, but i am here for it. from a historical standpoint, this book is fascinating. this is my first PKD book and i was blown away by the world building. i could really tel...

“Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets…” Ecclesiastes 12:5The Man in the High Castle is a piece of the alternate history: Germany and Japan won in the Second World War and the world became a mixture of modern technologies and trash culture immersed in the obscurantism of dark ages...

Fans of Philip K. Dick and science fiction might be underwhelmed by The Man in the High Castle since, other than passing mention of cross- continent rocket-ship travel and a German exploration of Mars, there really isn’t any science or signature PKD craziness or large-scale action; rather, Dick’s 1962 book is alternative history, the aftermath in the United States after Germany and Japan win World War II and a novel of ideas. There are a number of crisscrossing plots, colorful main characters, a...

Thank God, this is fiction, at least in our dimension! WELCOME TO 1962 It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. This book is a frightening glimpse of how our world could been if the Axis Powers would have won the World War II.The Nazi Germany and the Imperial Japan won and they divided the planet between them. Even the United States is now divided with the East Coast dominated

Re-read 9/18/19:So, do I have anything I want to say that I didn't say in my original review? Yes. Possibly. My least favorite section usually involved all the jewelry making and the eventual rise and fall of the metal as a main character in the story. But this time? Maybe I just happened to be in the right mood. Tagomi's crisis in perception was VERY PKD and pretty delightful this time around. The jewelry being a catalyst, a doorway through the Yin into the Yang and vice versa, resonated strang...

My preparedness for the regime change taking place in the United States--with elements of the Electoral College, the Kremlin and the FBI helping to install a failed business promoter who the majority of American voters did not support in the election--continues with The Man In the High Castle, the Hugo Award winning novel by Philip K. Dick published in 1962. Dick's sheer output and high concept hooks that can be reduced to three words--"Axis Won WWII"--have proved irresistible to film and televi...