Notes from The Man in the High Castle

I was a fan of Philip K. Dick’s _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_, the inspiration for _Blade Runner_, and thought his idea for _The Man in the High Castle_, a dystopian vision of a world where Germany and Japan won WWII, might be interesting. So I read it straight through in a day and was, well, confused. People were mostly just going about their business, buying and selling things, having families and going to work. The book wasn’t terribly climactic, which somehow suited the strange cast of characters and their dispirate activities. There wasn’t anyone really spectacular, nor a definite protagonist, just people going through life. It reflects the ‘antique’ salesman’s definition of what makes something important:

> Wyndham-Matson’s point is a radically relativist one: ‘”a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun”‘.

— [review of the book](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/highcastle.htm)

I was looking for a cool alternative-history novel, but as [another review](http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/mhc.htm) notes, that’s not really what this book is about:

> I would go so a far as to say that anyone looking for historical verisimilitude in this book is missing the point. This is not an alternative-history novel, but an anti-history novel. The book suggests that any history is fundamentally unreal. This is not to say that all history is illusion, or that there is nothing to choose between one historical scenario and another, but that there is a truth that is true even if events contradict it.

The idea I liked the most about this is the faith in life to balance itself. The unfinished sequel to this book explores more the parallel/alternate universe that we just glimpse in TMITHC. It’s the self-preservation instinct that kicks in when we sense something is dangerous, even arguably things we’re not genetically prepared for, like nuclear war, which some psychologists now believe we back away from instinctively despite having no experience with it. Again from the review:

> The message of this book is not very different from that of Ursula LeGuin’s, _The Lathe of Heaven._ Using the device of dreams that shape reality, that story suggests that history comes back into balance when events threaten to destroy the world; not just the future changes, but the past changes as well. Similarly, the author of _The Grasshopper Lies Heavy_ says he wrote it to show that the Germans and the Japanese did not win the war, even though history says they did. This leaves us to speculate whether the history we know, or that we think we know, might similarly be untrue, even if it is factual.

In the end so much of the novel is about how history and meaning is all in our heads; that by perceiving differently we can see more of the truth. In my experience the world is not that complicated. There is real good and real evil, and real opportunity to change things. You don’t have to look very far or cleverly to find it. While I appreciate and resonate with the concept of the world righting itself in the end, it must be through action, not perception, that it happens.