THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

"It is the morning after Doomsday. America has been attacked and overcome."

"What is that enormous structure below?" Lotze asked. "It is half-finished, open at one side. A spaceport? The Nipponese have no spacecraft, I thought." In the GSM Collection 1st.EDITION: Putnams, hb, 62-18262, Oct 1962, 239pp, $3.95, (Robert Galster) {Levack: "Bound in black cloth with red lettering on the front cover and spine. Date code 'D36' [36th week, 1962] on lower left margin of page 239. Top edges stained yellow. No date on the title page. [Putnam normally does not mark first printings, but explicitly marks later printings]"}

UK 1st.: Penguin, pb, 002376-3, 1965, 236pp, 5/- (Max Ernst)

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:

These Putnam's editions are in the GSM collection; we are uncertain of the dates of publication but suspect that all are SFBC editions:

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

"God speaks to man in the sign of the Arousing." Mr. Tagomi murmured.
"pardon?"
"The Oracle. I'm sorry. Fleece-seeking cortical response."
Woolgathering, Baynes thought. That's the idiom he means. To himself he smiled.

Vote for your Fave PKD Story!    THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Without any doubt this is Dick's best book. It has a deep internal moral. A book which is not easy to access and understand in its deeper meaning. Therefore it has been named by several friends of mine as "dull."
        It may be that it is indeed -- as John Brunner mentioned in Dusseldorf as Guest-of-Honour at a Con there -- one of three books you can give someone who hasn't read SF and should be won for that genre. But I won't give it to a fan in hand who hasn't read Dick yet; there have been some awful comments on it.
        The SF aspect isn't so dominating in this book, even if it is there, the book is in a way a perfect meld of mainstream and SF. Impressive is Dick's ability to show us "normal" people confronted with severe problems and their ways to cope with them. Mr. Tagomi is a character who is one of my favorite in the whole of SF. He is growing in strength and kills a person against his confession. The scene in which he is transferred to a parallel world is a piece of very strong writing.   -- Jurgenn Thomann, Germany

Vote for your Fave PKD Story! MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Deservedly prize-winning; much stronger than that other, better received what-iffer, SS-GB, by Len Deighton. -- Michael Field, Manitoba

PKDS-30    1:    

   Dear Tony,

    I talked to Pete Israel, my editor at Putnam's, after talking to you, and he assured me that they "could have it both ways": market their printing of MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in a mainstream type way as well as a way which would appeal to the s-f reader, especially in terms of my name. Pete said, "Of course, I guess you're not as well-known as Heinlein, are you?" In a rather hopeful tone, as if he were wondering if maybe I was as well-known, and how nice that would be, like Pooh wondering if there was another jar of honey, or had he eaten the last, etc. "Pete," I said, "I may not be as well-known as Heinlein, but Tony Boucher says --" and here I attributed to you certain favorable statements as to me & my work, which, I could tell, did not fall on deaf ears. As they are just now copy-editing the MS, this is my last time to make any pitch to them... so forgive me if I used you as a totem god mask of Power and Magic by which to make effective my wish.

{... ...}

    I was sick from November all the way through to March. Even the news of my sale to Putnam's failed to affect me (December tenth, it took place); {...} I did a rewrite on MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE for Pete Israel ... but what lay ahead? On March first, the book became finally accepted by Putnam's legally -- and that was over. Now what?

{... ...}

/s/ Phil Dick {PKD>Tony Boucher, April 25, 1962}

TDC 70

(PKD:) But mostly I wrote for the editor. To me it wasn't the reader who bought it, it was the editor who bought it; it was as simple as that. The big change came when I wrote THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, because the book was not written for Donald Wollheim. I had sold TIME OUT OF JOINT, and had gotten the idea of selling a hardcover novel. With MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, I had no concept of an audience at all. I had no concept even of an editor. It was a pure relationship between me and the characters in the novel, and it stayed pretty much that way.

{...} {TDC 71:} ...Dick Lupoff put it very well: In 1964 he was at this party, and was discussing with somebody the meaning of the ending of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. And (he said) there was this guy, smoking a cigar, who kept trying to butt into the conversation and say what the ending meant. Finally, Lupoff turned to the guy and said, "Will you please not bother us; we're discussing the ending of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE." And the guy says, "Well, I'm Philip K. Dick, and I wrote it." (laughter) I can see myself standing at the periphery of a circle of my own fans, and they're all discussing some book of mine, and I'm saying, "Um...um...What I think he meant was..." and they turn to me and say, "Butt out, joker." It would either go that way, or they'd want to know what I thought, and that would be a drag...

TDC 73

(PKD:) Yeah. Even Tony Boucher, at first, would not accept THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE as science fiction. Really amazing. I was really surprised that a man of his calibre would say something like this. I heard him review it over KPFA, and he said it was really a mainstream novel. Then I talked to him at a party, and he said, "That book was a breakthrough in science fiction." And I thought, Gee, that just goes to show you the hangup we all have... that if it's good, it's not science fiction, and so on.

TDC 136

Ring Of Fire was intended to be a sequel to THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Phil's Hugo Award-winning tale of an alternate timestream in which the United States and her allies lost the Second World War. The "ring of fire" refers to the ring of volcanoes and earthquake faults around the edge of the North Pacific Ocean which corresponds to the Japanese Empire as it exists at the end of HIGH CASTLE.

{For continuation see: TDC 138}

Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi thought, There is no answer. No understanding. Even in the oracle. Yet I must go on living day to day anyhow.

TSR 16

(PKD:) I did so without preamble; I simply sat down and wrote. And what I wrote was THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. It sold right away, received a number of reviews suggesting that it should win the Hugo, and then, one day, I got a letter from my agent congratulating me for winning the Hugo. Another point had been passed in my career -- and, as before, I didn't realize it. All I knew was that I wanted to write more and more books; the books got better and the publishers were more interested in them.

Now, most readers do not know how little SF writers were paid. I had been earning about $6000 a year. In the year following the Hugo Award, I earned $12000, and close to that in the subsequent years (1965-68). And I wrote at a fantastic speed; I produced twelve novels in two years... which must be a record of some sort. I could never do this again -- the physical stress was enormous... but the Hugo was there to tell me that what I wanted to write was what a good number of readers wanted to read. Amazing as it seems!
{PKD, Self Portrait, 1968}

TSR 19

(PKD:) What matters to me is the writing, the act of manufacturing the novel, because while I am doing it, at that particular moment, I am in the world I am writing about. It is real to me, completely and utterly. Then, when I'm finished, and have to stop, withdraw from that world forever -- that destroys me. The men and women have ceased talking.They no longer move. I'm alone, without much money, and, as I said before, nearly 40. Where is Mr. Tagomi, the protagonist in MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE? He has left me; we are cut off from each other. To read the novel does not restore Mr. Tagomi, place him once again where I can hear him talk. Once written, the novel speaks generally to everyone, not specifically to me. When a novel of mine comes out I have no more relationship to it than has anyone who reads it -- far less, in fact, because I have the memory of Mr. Tagomi and all the others... Gino Molinari, for example, in NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, or Leo Bulero in 3 STIGMATA. My friends are dead, and as much as I love my wife, daughter, cat -- none of these nor all of these is enough. The vacuum is terrible. Don't write for a living; sell shoelaces. Don't let it happen to you.

I promise myself: I will never write another novel. I will never again imagine people from whom I will eventually be cut off. I tell myself this... and, secretly and cautiously, I begin another book.

{'Notes made late at night by a weary SF writer', 168, 1972}

Vote for your Fave PKD Story!    MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. If it Happened -- if the Axis really won -- this is what it must be like. -- Greg Lee, CA

TSR 237

(PKD:) As a science fiction writer I gravitate towards such ideas as this; we in the field, of course, know this idea as the "alternate universe" theme. Some of you I am sure, know that my novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE utilized this theme. There was in it an alternate world in which Germany and Japan and Italy won World War 2. At one point in the novel Mr. Tagomi, the protagonist, somehow is carried over to our world, in which the Axis powers lost. He remained in our world only a short time, and scuttled in fright back to his own universe as soon as he glimpsed or understood what had happened -- and thought no more of it after that; it had been for him a thoroughly unpleasant experience, since, being Japanese, it was for him a worse universe than his customary one. For a Jew, however, it would have been infinitely better -- for obvious reasons.

In THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE I give no real explanation as to why or how Mr.Tagomi slid across into our universe; he simply sat in the park and scrutinized a piece of modern abstract handmade jewelry -- sat and studied it on and on -- and when he looked up, he was in another universe. I didn't explain how or why this happened because I don't know.{...}

{"If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others" (1977)}

TSR 245

In THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE there is a novelist, Hawthorne Abendsen, who has written an alternate-world novel in which Germany, Italy and Japan lost World War 2. At the conclusion of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, a woman appears at Abendsen's door to tell him what he does not know: that his novel is true; the Axis did indeed lose the war. The irony of this ending -- Abendsen finding out that what he had supposed to be pure fiction spun out of his imagination was in fact true -- the irony is this: that my own supposed imaginative work THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is not fiction -- or rather is fiction only now, thank God. But there was an alternate world, a previous present, in which that particular time track actualized -- actualized and then was abolished due to intervention at some prior date. I am sure, as you hear me say this, you do not really believe me, or even believe that I believe it myself. but nevertheless it is true. I retain memories of that other world. That is why you will find it again described in the later novel FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID. { See same for continuation}

Vote for your Fave PKD Story!    To a Westerner who has no intimate knowledge of the Japanese the portrayal of life in Japanese-ruled California after the Axis won World War 2 is believable. The character of Mr. Tagomi is a strong one. The Nazi presence is ominous and ever-present and the horror we all feel at their atrocities is appropriately expressed by PKD. In a sense this novel is a study of the bureaucratic mind. Mr. Tagomi, the Japanese functionary, who is under intense pressure to conform to an alien dictat, fights back, gesture-wise, and redeems himself and humanity. And the helplessness and hopelessness of a conquered nation finds expression in the actions of the minor characters. -- Lord RC

SF EYE #14 Spring, 1996 p40

(PKD:) THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE does not appeal to me as much because he's really inhuman, that man in the high castle. I don't think anything he does is funny at all.

(A & F:)Why do you think it won the Hugo?

(PKD:) Well, it's well written. It's a masterpiece. But I don't particularly enjoy it. I mean I appreciate it. I admire it. But I admire it in a detached sort of intellectual way.

(A & F:) Do you like the character of Mr. Tagomi particularly?

(PKD:) I'm very fond of him, yes.

BGSU Papers

{This letter}Informs Phil that they have sent, per his request, five copies of the Japanese edition of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE under seperate cover -- cost to be deducted from his Japanese royalties. Also provided the address of the Japanese translator. {Hayakawa Shobo & Co. > PKD, 3 Oct 1968}

BGSU Papers

Dear Mr. Kawaguchi,

        I am told by Mr. Fukushima of Hayakawa Shobo & Company that you translated my novel, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. I wonder if I could ask you several questions about the Japanese edition. Viz.:

Did the novel sell well in Japan?

Were the reviews of the novel favorable? If so, what did the reviewers like, and if not, what did they dislike?

I like Japanese people and Japan (which I would very much like to visit). In the novel did I manage to convey my positive feelings toward Japan and the Japanese? I felt that the Japanese occupation of the USA, described in the novel, would be stern but fair -- unlike the German. A major aspect of the novel was my desire to contrast the two, German and Japanese occupation. Did this contrast get across? I would be very distressed if it turned out that my favorable feelings toward Japan did not come across in the novel, as seen from your standpoint. After all, the basis of the novel was Mr. Tagomi's thwarting of German designs, his deep humanitarian quality which defied the German authorities. Of all the fiction I have written, nothing has meant more to me than the scene in which Mr. Tagomi confronts the German authorities and wins out against them, in the name of humanity.

Did the special speech of the Japanese living in the USA West Coast seem convincing to you? Or did I misrepresent the Jpanese manner of speaking English? I would be very upset if, in your opinion, this special speech was not convincing.

Did you yourself personally like the novel?

I am sorry to be putting so many questions to you, but all this is very important to me. I am sorry for causing you any inconvenience, and any and all answers you might give me to the above questions would be quite valuable to me. Thank you very much for your trouble and time, and I will hope to hear from you.

Cordially, 

{PKD > Shokichi Kawaguchi (Tokyo), 12-8-68}

{Thanks to Patrick Clark and the PKD Trust. As are all these letters taken from the BGSU Collection excerpted herein, this material is copyright, The Philip K. Dick Trust. All rights reserved... For information contact Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency, Inc., 381 Park Avenue South, ste.1020, New York, NY 10016.}

Unknown1 {The Mainstream That Through the Ghetto Flows} Swastika1.jpg (1171 bytes)

(PKD:) I did seven years of research for The Man in the High Castle. Seven years of research: it took me seven years to amass the material on the Nazis and the Japanese. Especially on the Nazis. And that's probably the reason why it's a better novel than most of my novels: I knew what I was talking about. I had prime-source material at the Berkeley-Cal library right from the gestapo's mouth--stuff that had been seized after World War II. Stuff that was marked for the eyes of "the higher police" only. I had to read what those guys wrote in their private journals in order to write THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. That's also why I've never written a sequel to it: it's too horrible, too awful. I started several times to write a sequel, but I had to go back and read about Nazis again, so I couldn't do it. Somebody would have to come in and help me--someone who had the stomach for it, the stamina, to think along those lines, to get into the head of the right character. Now, Richard Condon, who wrote The Manchurian Candidate, also wrote a thing called An Infinity of Mirrors, which is about Reichsfuhrer Himmler, and Condon knew everything there was to know about Himmler. He got into Himmler's head; he had the guts to do that. I don't, and that's why my book, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, is set in the Japanese part. I just have little glimpses of the Nazi part.

{...}

(Interviewer:) What do they think of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in Germany?

(Dick:) They didn't know that I could read German. A publisher bought it in Germany and began to translate it, and when I learned that they'd bought it, I said, "Oh, no, you're not going to put that book out in Germany without letting me see the German translation." I said, "Listen, Scott, we're not going to let them publish that book lest I read the galleys. It's gotta be sine qua non. It's gotta be a condition." Well, they didn't have galleys. They just had the typescript, so they had to send that to us. When I started reading that thing, I could see that they had destroyed the book. They'd turned it into a travesty of itself. I actually burst into tears when I finished reading it. Here was my best novel, right, and they said, "We didn't know you could read German." They actually said that in their letter. They gave me five days to read it, and my German got very fluent. I stayed up night and day with my Cassell's German-English Dictionary and I read every single word, comparing the German line by line with the English. They hadn't changed any of the political parts--all the anti-Nazi stuff was still there. They'd just turned it into a cheap adventure novel. I remember one part where it read: Tagomi stolzierte einher wie Wyatt Earp." Now, I never mentioned Wyatt Earp in my book. "Tagomi swaggered like Wyatt Earp"! "Tagomi swaggered like Vyatt Oorp"!

(Interviewer:) What about Japan?

(Dick:) I can't read Japanese. I can read the English titles of my novels in the bio section in the back. So help me--I don't mean this as a slur against the Japanese--but they listed Valuable Man instead of Variable Man. Somebody suggested I write the translator and ask him specific questions about the book, and he did write back. Now, I thought the Japanese were supposed to be very polite, but I was wrong. First of all, he said, "Your book wasn't any good to start with.'' Secondly, he said, "You've also confused Chinese culture and Japanese culture. The Chinese are inferior people, and the I Ching's Chinese and not Japanese. No Japanese would ever use some Confucian classic. Only foreigners use those." I was quite amazed at how up-front he was in his contempt for the book, but it's still in print in Japan. It's sold very well, and I've made almost thirty-five dollars off of it. Over a ten-year period. One time, I got a check for forty-two cents, and Scott Meredith had taken out two cents. A check for forty-two cents. It was the royalty for a copy that had sold in Tanganyika or some place like that. One copy, and my royalty's forty-two cents. And Scott took out two cents and sent me a check for forty cents. I was so broke, I cashed it. I wrote dirty words on the back of it for a long time, and finally I went up to the Seven Eleven and bought a Manhandler Meat Pie or something.

(Interviewer:) They took a forty-cent check?

(Dick:) Well, they kind of laughed at me, but they always laughed at me at Seven Eleven anyway because mv checks always bounced. At least this check didn't bounce, seeing how it was Scott's check. One time, four guys from the Seven Eleven showed up at the front door with two hundred and eighty-five dollars worth of bad checks that I'd written to the Seven Eleven. They said, "You've got till five o'clock to make them good or you're going to the DA's office." I borrowed it from mv insurance agent. State Farm loaned me the money. That's the life of the writer. I'm laughing now, but I wasn't laughing that day.

{For continuation see: Mainstream That Through The Ghetto Flows}

                             

SL-38 63:

Dear Tony,

I called Pete Israel, my editor at Putnam's,after talking to you, and he assured me that they "could have it both ways": market their printing of MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in a mainstream type way as well as a way that would appeal to the s-f reader, especially in terms of my name. Pete said, "Of course, I guess you're not as well-known as Heinlein, are you?" In a rather hopeful tone, as if he were wondering if maybe I was as well-known, and how nice that would be, like Pooh wondering if there was another jar of honey, or had he eaten the last, etc. "Pete," I said, "I may not be as well-known as Heinlein, but Tony Boucher says --" and here, I admit I attributed to you certain favorable statements as to me & my work, which, I could tell, did not fall on deaf ears. As they are now just copy-editing the MS, this is my last time to make any pitch to them ... so forgive me if I used you as a totem god mask of Power and Magic by which to make effective my wish.

{...}

{...} I was sick from November all the way through to March. Even the news of my sale to Putnam's failed to affect me (December tenth, it took place) {...} ... I did a rewrite on MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE for Pete Israel... but what lay ahead? On March first, the book became finally accepted by Putnam's legally -- and that was over. Now what?

{...}

{PKD > Tony Boucher, Apr 25, 1962}

OnPKD 87:

{Juliana} is the only one who understands the meaning of Abendsen's book (Ch.15) and it shows her there is a way out: "There's nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue": Her understanding is confirmed when she asks the I Ching: What are we supposed to learn from The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? The answer: Inner Truth, the same hexagram as Mr. Tagomi's. And what is the inner truth? That Germany and Japan lost the war, just as Abendsen's book describes. The winner of the war is really the loser. Dick here asks the reader to follow him through a series of reflections in the artifices mirroring reality. In the world of TMITHC, the Nazis really won the war, but in the SF world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (representing inner truth), they really lost it. If the reader moves back a step, he realises that in the real world of human construct, the US and its allies won the war, so the inner truth, contained in Dick's SF, is that they really lost it. An equation is established in which Dick's novel is to the real world what Abendsen's novel is to Dick's fictional reality. The winner of any war is locked into the necessity of continuing to fight to maintain his superior power position. The effort eventually destroys him. On a moral level, he has already been destroyed because of the horrendous acts he committed to win. The winner paradoxically is the loser. The reader's eyes meet Dick's in the hall of mirrors the fiction builds when he understands this meaning. {Patricia S. Warrick "The Encounter of Taoism and Fascism in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE."}

Welcome To Reality  Swastika1.jpg (1171 bytes)wpe29.jpg (858 bytes)Swastika1.jpg (1171 bytes)wpe2A.jpg (858 bytes)

{... ...}

   In April of 1974, American science-fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer called Philip K. Dick and asked him to contribute to an anthology of original stories written by fictional authors. Dick liked the idea, and agreed to come up with a story by Hawthorne Abendsen, author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a character in Dick's novel, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

    The story had a working title, "A Man For No Countries," and Dick noted that it would be about "'our' world (not quite) and what happened to me 11/17/71" (the date of the mysterious break-in at Dick's house in San Rafael, California), but it was never written, or rather, it evolved into a novel, RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH (written in 1976, published in 1985). RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, originally called VALISYSTEM A, was the first Philip K. Dick novel in which Philip K. Dick was a fictional character, under his own name. The second was VALIS (written in '78, published in '81). The third was The Secret Ascension (Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas), written after Dick's death by Michael Bishop (published in 1987)

{... ...}

(Paul Williams in the Introduction to Welcome To Reality: The Nightmares of Philip K. Dick, Broken Mirrors Press, tp, ISBN 0-9623824-5-0, Feb 1991, 208pp, $12.95(D. Wilson) Edited by Uwe Anton.}{Welcome To Reality is a collection of short stories by various authors in which Philip K. Dick is a character or figures largely in some way. For some more stories in the same vein see our ezine wpe28.jpg (1399 bytes)}

R.E.Geis    ?

   Thank you for your nice letter and the copy of PSYCHOTIC. It is a good fanzine. {...} Your comment on THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE interested me; I agree it's the best I've done. The man Tagomi is as real to me as anyone I know, and, to speak cornily, I wrote my heart out in depicting his tribulations ... and especially the scene -- which is the climax of the novel -- when he refuses to turn the captured jew over to Nazi officials. Tagomi's state of mind at that moment reminds me of a phrase by the Irish poet James Stephens; he speaks of timid rage. I will always love Mr. Tagomi for refusing to comply with the Germans' request; it is one of those tiny heroisms which is overlooked and yet fills a great part in the living of human -- true human -- life.

(...}

{PKD>Psychotic?, ? (An R.E. Geis zine?)}

BGSU?

Dear Phil,

    {...}Do you think Riders{Of The Purple Wage}, LORD OF LIGHT, my THREE STIGMATA could have been written and sold ten years ago? And could we have written them? I couldn't, as far as mine goes. The field had no room for such as they*{fn. ...} The field ten years ago was Harlan Ellison appearing in every issue of every magazine. I'm not saying that to put down Harlan, but it's true: the field was much smaller in every sense. I half expected it to wink out entirely or become similar to the Western field, which I abhor. And then all of a sudden something happened. I know it happened to me, because one day I was writing VULCAN'S HAMMER for an Ace double and the next day I was writing, without even notes, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. I say <<next day,>> but actually almost two years passed in which I wrote nothing at all. And then when I did go back I was different and what I wrote was different. In the old days I wrote s-f, and then put what literary mini ability I had into mainstream and experimental literary-type novels -- which never sold, bringing about a situation in which what I wrote that was marketable was seperated from what I wrote that had literary value -- and only the first category ever saw print. I saved my best for mainstream writing... and now, since MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, I put all the literary skill I have into my s-f, my marketable work. The field gains when its writers do this, and when they do not -- when they do what I formerly did -- the field loses.{... ...}

{PKD>Philip Jose Farmer, 14 Nov 1968}{The Bowling Green State University Papers. Thanks to Patrick Clark and the PKD Trust}

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