I’ve been a Philip K. Dick fan since I was a kid. I read “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (on which the film Bladerunner is based) and was hooked by Dick’s crisp writing, loaded with an old-school crime reporter’s eye and dark humor. His worlds had recognizable scaffolding, the imagined laced with plausible extrapolation and a noir-esque grit. Among my favorite books—whatever the genre—is “Ubik,” and the relatable protagonist Joe Chip, perpetually broke, who, at one point in the book, gets in an argument with his front door that he is unable to pay to leave.
When Amazon launched its ”The Man in the High Castle” series, I was excited. I recalled the premise: Japan and Germany, victorious in WWII, occupy the United States, and while the country is divided into four territories, the two superpowers control roughy their halves from the coast they invaded (Germany the east, Japan the west) with the Rocky Mountain States territory a sort of refuge from the harsh rules of either empire—although spies abound. I watched the first three seasons impressed, and my desire to re-read the book grew. I finally got around to it—at the start of 2025.
Turns out I never read that book, likely absorbing the story instead from essays written about it and other summaries.
The book is a masterwork for our current predicament—and not just the obvious “Nazis/Fascists-amongst-us” storyline. More importantly, the book, within its energetic 250 pages or so, conveys the anxiety and paranoia that now invades our current times. In the book, German Nazis still hunt Jews, and one learns they have exterminated much of the population in Africa. The Japanese empire, while more tolerant with various ethnic groups (including Americans) practice a strict caste system—it’s the Japanese first in line and get the seat at the restaurant counter or on public transport, for example. Also, a sort of slavery exists, and guess which group occupies that caste.
On the streets of San Francisco, where much of the story takes place, no one really trusts anyone, consequently those under the “ruling class” are still fearful of their neighbors who might suspect them of something and turn one over to the authorities to curry favor. While the Japanese government tolerates Jews in their territory, it remains for them a tenuous existence, where, if discovered, German authorities could still request their extradition for extermination. The Japanese are not immune to feelings of distrust and anxiety: while allied with Germany in the war, the relationship is tense, resembling the Cold War years between the US and Soviet Union—or worse: the Japanese view the Germans much as Ukraine (and Canada, Mexico and Europe) does the US in our current moment—they feel the knife tip at their back.
There’s enough escapism with the book’s alternate reality to not add to the current stress in our lives. The year is 1962, the Germans mastered rocket travel, while the Japanese introduced a spiritual tradition that the general population absorbed, it seems, willingly, and grounds key characters. The Man in the High Castle is, actually, a character who wrote a book circulating the country that imagines the Allies victorious in the war. I won’t hint at any spoilers.
Reading the book and comparing it with how the series progressed, many liberties were taken—in a good way. The book leaves much for interpretation—bits and pieces that the series writers took and ran with, which made for great television in seasons one through three. (The fourth was clearly rushed to wrap things up.)
Read the book, I say. The lesson is clear and resonates today—when no one trusts anyone, it’s a hard, mostly miserable existence.