What I’m Reading: The Man in the High Castle

It would be true to say that Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle is a novel of science fiction / alternate history – but only in its setting.  It has some of the trappings of science fiction – rockets and space travel.  And it has some of the trappings of an alternate history novel – the Axis powers won World War II.    But this slim novel is more than that, much more.

It is a story about reality – or what seems to be real.  It is a story about identity and people who pretend to be something or someone else.  It is a story about discerning what is real and what is true. How can we know what is real?  Can we detect the fake, the counterfeit, and the forgery?  Could we prove the reality of our own existence?  This is a common theme in Dick’s work; what does it mean to be real?

Confounding the question of reality within this alternate history is that many of the characters are themselves reading an alternate history novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy wherein the Allied powers won World War II (but not in the way it happened in history as we know it…) In the conclusion of the story the characters learn that what they believed to be their true reality, isn’t.   And that, in turn, casts doubts upon the reality of our reality.  Suddenly the reader finds him/herself asking, ‘am I a character in a novel within a novel?’

The Man in the High Castle is considered a ‘classic’ of science fiction.  Dick was awarded the Hugo Award for it in 1963.