History Literature / TheManInTheHighCastle

* RealitySubtext: Philip K. Dick actually did consult the ''I Ching'' while coming up with ideas for the book, much as Hawthorne does when writing his. This may imply he is something of an AuthorAvatar.

* ScienceMarchesOn: The mentions of Nazi colonies on Mars ''and Venus'' by 1962. Both the ease of getting to those planets, and the habitability of the latter, were overestimated in TheSixties.

--> "The basic purpose of Operation Dandelion [[spoiler: is an enormous nuclear attack on the Home Islands, without advance warning of any kind]].

''The Man in the High Castle'', published in 1962, is not only one of the defining works of Creator/PhilipKDick's career, but also one of the seminal AlternateHistory novels. The novel, which won the Hugo Award, goes through the looking glass into a then-contemporary United States which, after [[ForWantOfANail the assassination]] of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933, stayed out of the World War II, thus allowing the Nazis and Imperial Japan to steamroll the globe and carve up continental America. By the time the novel begins, the Empire of Japan, occupying the west coast, and Nazi Germany, which has made a racist puppet state out of the east, have fallen into a ColdWar, paralleling the real one between the United States and the USSR.

* MutuallyFictional: Subverted heavily. ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'' is a book set in a fictional world where the Allies won WorldWarTwo, but it is yet ''another'' AlternateHistory.

But you come for the fascist dystopia, and you end up staying for the {{Taoism}}. This book was one of Dick's first to explore eastern mysticism, and marked a turning point away from his earlier, mostly secular anti-fascist novels. In this alternate world the I-Ching is as common as the phone book, and most of the characters rely on sampling the winds of destiny to determine their every move. And to the reader's omnipotent eye, the more they cross paths, searching for something truthful in a world of fake kitsch and fake identities, the more [[YouALLShareMyStory the connections between them and their actions]] becomes apparent.

* GrassIsGreener: Captain Wegener, caught in a power struggle among the Nazi leadership, laments that [[DeliberateValuesDissonance neither side is the epitome of evil]], and consequently he longs for a world where good and evil are easy to recognize.

* UnbuiltTrope: Most Nazi victory AlternateHistory scenarios assume AdolfHitler would always be the revered founding father of the Third Reich. ''The Man in the High Castle'', on the other hand, deconstructs it--in 1962, aged 73, Hitler is still alive, but in a lunatic asylum, as even the Nazis have realised he's insane and rotten inside. This is part of the crapsackiness of the scenario--the entire modern world is built upon Hitler's dream, and no-one wants to admit that it was a mad nightmare.

->''"On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components. We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because because he can detect the obvious."''

* GrassIsGreener: Captain Wegener laments that the Nazis [[ValuesDissonance aren't the epitome of evil]], and longs for a world where good and evil are easy to recognize.

''The Man in the High Castle'', published in 1962, is not only one of the defining works of Creator/PhilipKDick's career, but also one of the seminal AlternateHistory novels. It goes through the looking glass into a then-contemporary United States carved up between the victorious Axis forces. After [[ForWantOfANail the assassination]] of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933, the United States stayed out of the World War II, allowing the Nazis and Imperial Japan to steamroll the globe. In the novel's timeframe, the Empire of Japan, occupying the west coast, and Nazi Germany, which has made a racist puppet state out of the east, have fallen into a ColdWar, paralleling the real one between the United States and the USSR.

As is standard for Dick's stories, there are no true heroes, just an ensemble of ordinary schlubs trying to make a living for themselves: Frank Frink, a metalworker who makes fake American kitsch popular with the Japanese; Robert Childan, a prominent seller of the aforementioned Americana; Mr. Tagomi, a ranking Japanese official and regular customer of Childan's; Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife in the Rocky Mountain States (a neutral buffer between east and west) who becomes engrossed in [[ShowWithinAShow a mysterious book depicting an alternate universe where the Axis forces lost]]; and Mr. Baynes, allegedly a Swiss businessman, who is coming to meet Mr. Tagomi with a dire warning.

But you come for the fascist dystopia, and you end up staying for the {{Taoism}}. This book was one of Dick's first to explore eastern mysticism, and marked a turning point away from his earlier, mostly secular anti-fascist novels. In this alternate world the I-Ching is as common as the phone book, and most of the characters rely on sampling the winds of destiny to determine their every move. And, to the reader's omnipotent eye, the more they cross paths, searching for something truthful in a world of fake kitsch and fake identities, the more the OneDegreeOfSeparation between them and their actions becomes apparent.

* MutuallyFictional: Subverted heavily. ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'' is a book set in a fictional world where the Allies won WorldWarTwo, but it is yet ''another'' AlternateHistory.
* OneDegreeOfSeparation: All the characters are connected on a surface level, but they're also connected in surprising ways that hint at a greater design. [[spoiler: Frank Frink, for instance, designs a piece of folk jewelry. Later, through Robert Childan, it ends up in Tagomi's hands, who studies it and has a spiritual awakening, which results in him rudely defying the German consul's request for extradition for a Jewish prisoner: Frank Frink.]]

''The Man in the High Castle'', published in 1962, is not only one of the defining works of Creator/PhilipKDick's career, but also one of the seminal AlternateHistory novels. It goes through the looking glass, into a then-contemporary United States carved up between the victorious Axis forces after [[ForWantOfANail the assassination]] of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933, which has settled into a ColdWar between the Empire of Japan, occupying the west coast, and Nazi Germany, which has made a racist puppet state out of the east.

As is standard for Dick's stories, there are no true heroes, just an ensemble of ordinary schlubs trying to make a living for themselves: Frank Frink, a metalworker who makes fake American kitsch popular with the Japanese; Robert Childan, a prominent seller of the aforementioned Americana; Mr. Tagomi, a ranking Japanese official and regular customer of Childan's; Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife in the Rocky Mountain States (a neutral buffer between east and west) who becomes engrossed in [[ShowWithinAShow a mysterious book depicting an alternate universe where the Axis forces lost World War II]]; and Mr. Baynes, allegedly a Swiss businessman, coming to meet Mr. Tagomi with a dire warning.

But you come for the Nazi dystopia, you stay for the {{Taoism}}. This book was one of Dick's first to explore eastern mysticism, and marked a turning point away from his earlier, mostly secular anti-fascist novels. In this alternate world the I-Ching is as common as the phone book, and most of the characters rely on sampling the winds of destiny to determine their every move. And, to the reader's omnipotent eye, the more they cross paths the more the OneDegreeOfSeparation between them and their actions becomes apparent.

AlternateHistory novel by Creator/PhilipKDick, published in 1962. It takes place in America in the early 1960s. This book is set in a world where the assassination of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933 led to a complete Axis victory in WorldWarTwo, and German and Japanese domination over the entire world. ''The Man in the High Castle'' is mostly focused on the lives of ordinary people living in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America (the west coast) and the neutral buffer-zone Rocky Mountain States (the eastern USA being a German puppet government). Two books feature significantly - the ''I Ching'' and the [[ShowWithinAShow book-within-a-book]] ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which posits a world where the Axis Powers lost the war, written by the titular Man in the High Castle.

* AlternateUniverse: At least two of them.

* EnemyMine: The SS, who are opposed to Goebbels becoming chancellor and nuking Japan [[spoiler: and stage a coup against him.]]

* MutuallyFictional: Subverted heavily. ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'' is a book set in a fictional world where the Allies won WorldWarTwo, but it is yet ''another'' AlternateHistory.

* ThemeNaming: "Operation Dandelion", which is [[spoiler:a nuclear attack on Japan]], evokes the name of "Operation Sealion", the Nazi invasion of Britain. [[FridgeBrilliance In real life, the Nazis were notorious for using overly obvious code names]].

* ALighterShadeOfGrey: At least some factions of the Nazi Party are depicted as more reasonable than the leadership, and oppose its genocidal plans [[spoiler:such as wiping out the Japanese.]]
** And that reasonable faction is Heydrich and the SS, who already are genocidal maniacs in their own right. Faced with the SadisticChoice of either supporting the SS rise to power or watching [[spoiler:his homeland be exterminated]], Mr. Tagomi has a bit of a HeroicBSOD moment.

* AmericaWinsTheWar: Inverted and Played Straight at the same time. Obviously, America ''doesn't'' win the war in this timeline, but the timeline's main point of divergence is Franklin Roosevelt's assassination, which meant that America stayed isolationist and didn't get involved in WorldWarII, implying that the Allies never could have won the war without America's help[[hottip:note:Which is most likely true, or at least the British and Soviets would have been way worse off. American production was the driving force behind the Allied war effort; Stalin himself toasted it after the Nazis had surrendered, saying "without [American production], this war would have been lost."]]

** Interestingly, this trope is also used by the book-within-a-book ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy''. The aftermath of World War 2 in that story has Britain and America splitting the world instead, with the USSR being a nonentity. And the British empire, thanks to the authoritarian leadership of Churchill, would eventually beat the Americans. It could be that Dick realized the certain futility of what he was doing with the book itself, and so lampshaded it by introducing the book-within-a-book.

** Baynes may have been lying about that, to mess with Lotze. [[OrIsIt Or was he?]]

** scenes written from the point of view of Japanese characters, particularly Mr. Tagomi are written in a fragmented yet hyper-theoretical and erudite English, making the train of seem both unnatural and rather difficult to follow. Anything written from a Japanese and or American point of view (excpet the Japanified Childan) is written in straight prose.

** Interestingly, this trope is also used by the book-within-a-book ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy''. The aftermath of World War 2 in that story has Britain and America splitting the world instead, with the USSR being a nonentity. And the British empire, thanks to the authoritarian leadership of Churchill, would eventually beat the Americans. It could be that Dick realized what he was doing in the main plot and so lampshaded it in the book-within-a-book.

!!This book provides examples of :

* SecondaryCharacterTitle

AlternateHistory novel by PhilipKDick, published in 1962. It takes place in America in the early 1960s. This book is set in a world where the assassination of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933 led to a complete Axis victory in WorldWarTwo, and German and Japanese domination over the entire world. ''The Man in the High Castle'' is mostly focused on the lives of ordinary people living in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America (the west coast) and the neutral buffer-zone Rocky Mountain States (the eastern USA being a German puppet government). Two books feature significantly - the ''I Ching'' and the [[ShowWithinAShow book-within-a-book]] ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which posits a world where the Axis Powers lost the war, written by the titular Man in the High Castle.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: ImperialJapan, by *quite* a lot. Although it's not as bad as Nazi Germany and much of Japan's racism against non-Japanese is downplayed well below historical levels, it's still an oppressive dystopia. The main difference is that Japanese characters (Mr Tagomi, the Kasoura couple, General Tedeki) are treated more sympathetically.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: NaziGermany, but not by much.

AlternateHistory novel by PhilipKDick, published in 1962. It takes place in America in the early 1960s. This book is set in a world where the assassination of FranklinDRoosevelt in 1933 led to a complete Axis victory in WorldWarTwo, and German and Japanese domination over the entire world. ''The Man in the High Castle'' is mostly focused on the lives of ordinary people living in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America (the west coast) and the neutral buffer-zone Rocky Mountain States (the eastern USA being a German puppet government). Two books feature significantly - the ''I Ching'' and the book-within-a-book ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which posits a world where the Axis Powers lost the war, written by the titular Man in the High Castle.

* AmericaWinsTheWar: Inverted and Played Straight at the same time. Obviously, America ''doesn't'' win the war in this timeline, but the timeline's main point of divergence is Franklin Roosevelt's assassination, which meant that America stayed isolationist and didn't get involved in WorldWarII, implying that the Allies never could have won the war without America's help.