The Main in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle, by Phillip K. Dick is a grand and magisterial science fiction novel. Written in 1962, the only thing 'science fiction' about it is the fact that its an alternate history novel. Set in 1962, fifteen years after an alternative ending to World War II. Here, Germany and Japan actually win the war. Now, both countries share control over the entire world, including the United States. The Man in the High Castle won the most prestigious science fiction award [the critically acclaimed Hugo Award] in 1963. In 2015, Amazon Prime adapted the novel into a series. However, you can't compare the show to the novel, its just not good enough to even compare notes on. 

Inspirations for the book include Ward Moore's alternate Civil War history, Bring the Jubilee [1952], various classic World War II histories, as well as the I, Ching [used by the characters in the novel], which creates a sense of a novel within a novel.   

More on the world within the novel. FDR was assassinated in 1934, leading the continuation of the Great Depression and isolation during the War. Hitler and Nazi Germany take over Europe and the Soviet Union, murdering anyone they don't like. Japan controls Eastern Asia and Oceania. The Nazis helped Italy conquer Africa. Japan invades the US West Coast while Germany invades US East Coast. By 1947, the US and Allies surrender to the Axis powers, ending the War. The US is still independent, but under Nazi rule. 

By 1960 Japan and Nazi Germany are the worlds' superpowers. Japan establishes the Pacific States of America [P.S.A] from the former Western United States, with the Rocky Mountains as a neutral zone between the PSA and the Nazi-occupied former Eastern United States. For reasons not explained the UK, Spain, Canada, and many other nations in the world remain independent. 

Hitler is still alive but he's going through an advanced stage of syphilis, not governing. Martin Bormann is Chancellor of Germany, with Goebbels, Heydrich, Göring, Seyss-Inquart (who oversees the extermination of the peoples of Africa), and other Nazi leaders soon trying to take his place.

The Nazis drained the Mediterranean to make room for farmland, developed the hydrogen bomb, designed rockets for fast travel across the world as well as space, having colonized the Moon, Mars, and Venus. The novel takes place in PSA, where Chinese are second class citizens, and blacks are slaves. The secondary setting for the novel is the Rocky Mountain states, Cañon City, Denver and Cheyenne.

Now for the plot. This is where things get interesting. In 1962, Robert Childan owns an antique shop frequented by bourgeois Japanese who like historical American artifacts. Childan is contacted by Tagomi, a high-ranking Japanese official, who is seeking a gift for Baynes, a Swedish industrialist. Childan's store is stocked with items from WM, a company that Frank Frink [formerly Fink, a Jewish name] works for. 

Frank Frink is secretly an American Jew who survived Nazi Germany. He's just been fired from WM, so him and Ed [also from WM, Ed quits WM] go into the jewelry making business on their own. 

Meanwhile, Frank's ex-wife Juliana, works as a judo instructor in Canon City, Colorado, where she begins a sexual relationship with an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier, Joe Cinadella. Throughout the book, most of the characters, resort to using the I, Ching, a cultural import from China used ask questions, "what should I do?". Ask the Oracle. Most of the characters are also reading the Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a popular work of fiction that depicts a world where the Allies won the War, similar to our real life world. 

Frink reveals that WM has been selling Childan counterfeit material, not stuff of actual historical value, which works to blackmail WM so he can fund his new jewelry venture. Tagomi and Baynes meet but Baynes keeps delaying until they get word from a third party from Japan. Suddenly, the Chancellor of Germany, Martin Bormann dies, making national and world-wide news. Childan takes Frink's work on consignment to some Japanese, who tell them that the artwork is junk, but contains spiritual value. That the items could be sold in Asia or Latin America as magic good luck charms, things of that nature. This upsets Childan, who thinks that original American artwork is too good to be junk magic charms. Juliana and Joe out of nowhere decide to visit Abendsen, the writer of the Grasshopper. Goebbels is announced as the next new Chancellor of Germany. 

Baynes and Tagomi meet their Japanese contact as the Nazi secret police close in to arrest Baynes [who is actually a high ranking Nazi official, although he is really a Jew, complete with body changes and enhancements to lose his Jewish 'look']. In fact, it turns out that Baynes is actually a Nazi defector named Rudolf Wegener. Wegener warns his contact, a famous, high-ranking Japanese General of Operation Dandelion, a Goebbels approved surprise attack on the Japanese Home Islands, in order to destroy them in one fell swoop! 

Frink is exposed as a Jew and arrested [but is later released with no explanation]. Meanwhile, Wegener and Tagomi take down two SD Agents, actually it is Tagomi who kills both of them with an antique Civil War revolver. Back in Colorado, Joe cuts his hair short, dyes it blonde, and starts acting differently, making Juliana believe that he's going to kill Abendsen. In fact, she's been had. He's actually a Nazi on assignment to kill the famous writer of Grasshopper. 

Wegener flies back to Germany and finds out that Goebbels has been ousted by Reinhard Heydrich, who is anti-Dandelion. Tagomi is extremely shaken by the blood on his hands. He goes back to sell the antique revolver to Childan, but Childan doesn't take it back. Instead, Tagomi buys one of Frink and Ed's 'silly' trinket items that Childan had on consignment for EdFrank Jewelry. Tagomi goes on an intense spiritual quest where he momentarily perceives an alternate history of San Francisco. He does 'see' into the metaphysical reality, a philosophical section of the book.

Elsewhere, Juliana puts a razor blade to Joe's neck, presumably killing him. Then she goes on to meet Abendsen, who it turns out, doesn't live in a High Castle surrounded by weapons, but in a normal house, with his family and friends. In fact, Abendsen doesn't even occupy his mind with thoughts that he's going to get assassinated. However, when Juliana tells him that she saved him from a potential killer [Joe], Abendsen is grateful. Juliana asks Abendsen tough questions about how he wrote the Grasshopper. At first he gives her half-assed answers and is arrogant. But eventually he admits that he used the I, Ching to write Grasshopper, which leads to Juliana, before leaving, to infer that "Truth" wrote the book in order to reveal the "Inner Truth" that Japan and Germany really lost the War. 

I don't usually go into this much detail about the plot of a book when I write a blog about it. However, this novel is so important and great that I felt obligated to, so that if you, the reader don't have the time to actually read the novel, you can read my synopsis and find the inspiration to make time to read this great book. 

Some novels just hit you on the head and a light bulb goes on, a little voice in your head says, "This is an important book."  This is so with The Man in the High Castle. The material here, so much about Nazi's and whatnot, is hard to bear, and I think snowflakes in the Twitter literary world would find lots to complain about. However, because it was written in 1962, it got the praise it deserved, for it shows a world that could have been, may have been, if only we had lost the war. 

Culturally, there is a lot going on here. For example, just like how the characters in the book used the I, Ching to make important decisions, so did Phillip K. Dick use it for decisions regarding plot and such. Not only that but in order for Dick to write the book he did a ton of Nazi history reading. Going down that road is difficult for anyone [excluding Nazis], for that history is hard to take in, absorb, and write about. In fact, Dick wanted to write a sequel but couldn't because he just didn't want to read and write more about Nazis, understandably so. 

The use of the I, Ching makes for a great novel-within-a-novel theme [so does the Grasshopper book]. The use of the I, Ching is downright fascinating. This book has everything: extrapolation, suspense, action, art, philosophy, plot, and character. Its no wonder that it won the Hugo Award in 1963, its a masterpiece. 

In addition, another thing that really 'spoke' to me as I read the book was the pure artistry of Dick's literary style, technique. He's a true master of fiction. I learned more about how to write a sympathetic character, from studying the way Dick describes the thoughts of the characters as they 'perform' in the world of this particular fiction. I haven't thought about doing this sort of thing in my own fiction. I'm striving to become a great fiction writer, and although I think it would be super difficult to imitate Dick's style, I also think I've learned from his style as well, how to use the voice of the writer as well as the voice of the characters. Very important stuff.

In terms of Phillip K. Dick, it might not get any better than this. I've read a lot of Dick's novels, and the one I can think of that I enjoyed as much as this one was Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? However, I would say that this is arguably a more important novel in the genre, and for Dick as a writer.  

An aside, this is a very tough-minded book. Not for snowflakes.

Read the novel, skip the show, be amazed. 

Other blogs on Phillip K Dick
http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2017/05/phillip-k-dicks-cosmic-puppet.html 
http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2015/12/man-in-high-castle.html

February Update

Howdy partner! I've had a lot of free time lately, but haven't been writing as much. However, I've been extremely busy living an interior life, which of course involves a lot of reading and guitar playing. 

Usually I keep the blog updated very frequently but I haven't finished any novels, albums, or seen any interesting movies. However, I'm in the middle of a couple of great books and I'm even writing a rough draft for a novella, which I will try to get published, eventually, maybe in 2020 when I'm done with it. My goal is for it to be around 100 pages. Its about growing up in the Midwest in the early 2000's, very autobiographical. 

For starters, I've been reading this epic [457 page] science fiction novel by Cecelia Holland, a female historical fiction writer, called Floating Worlds. Floating Worlds is her first and only science fiction novel and it is quite grand. In a way, this book heavily reminds me of Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling, however, this book was written in 1976, some ten years before Schismatrix Plus. 

Basically, the Earth has been run down by pollution. Anarchists control the Earth's government. There are people on other planets and even aliens [Martians and others], called Styths. Our female protagonist gets a government job [ironic b/c they're anarchists], and is in charge of writing a treaty between the anarchists of Earth and Styths, these 'black' aliens with mustaches, claws, and very tall bodies. The female lead ends up getting the treaty by sleeping with the Styth leader, and she even has a baby by him! I'm about half-way through the novel. Interesting to note that the Styths say the word 'nigger' a lot, usually in reference to humans. In addition, Martians and other alien races refer to the Styths as niggers. I imagine that this would upset a lot of the social media crowd these days.

The idea is a very popular science fiction trope: a grand space opera spanning many pages. However, the writing is unlike most science fiction space operas I've read. The writing is simplistic, sometimes even bare bones. Sentences read easily, in fact, you could say the book reads itself, although it is quite long. Its quite something to see that you don't have to be as technical as say William Gibson or even Bruce Sterling to write great science fiction. This is a great example of that. 

In addition, I've been reading Being and Time [1927, 500 pages] by Martin Heidegger, the modern German philosopher.  In Being and Time, Heidegger attempts to explain "what is being". He says that since the time of the Greeks, philosophers have avoided the question, instead referring to the analysis of particular beings. He goes on to explain and define the meaning of being. I can't say that I truly understand everything in Being and Time. However, everything written in it is so captivating that sometimes I can't put it down. It keeps my attention, and makes me think very hard about what he's trying to say, which is to definite being. 

One thing that makes it very difficult to understand is the fact that its translated from German, meaning that a lot of the words and phrases get lost in translation. If you truly want to study Being and Time, you would have to read it in German. The other aspect of understanding here is the fact that the ideas presented are so abstract, so abstract that you can get lost in thoughts, your own thoughts about the ideas presented, as well as the sentences themselves. This is the most difficult philosophy I've read, [and I've read bits of Plato, Aristotle, Sir Tomas More, Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendash, Hobbes, Descartes, Adam Smith, Voltaire, and Bertrand Russell]. Nonetheless, its a terrific work that keeps me thinking and striving to understand 'being'.  Very motivating!

Moving on, and speaking of Germans, I just today started reading Man in the High Castle [1962, 240 pages] by Phillip K. Dick. I read half the book at the library and plan on finishing it soon. Its a terrific novel with a great pace. There is a show based on the novel on Amazon Prime but it doesn't hold a candle to the majesty of the novel itself. This novel won the prestigious science fiction award, the Hugo Award in 1963-well deserved! 

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel where Germany and Japan won World War II. Now, the Nazi's and Japan share control over the world, including the United States. The book makes use of the I, Ching, an ancient Chinese text used for religion, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. The way its used in the novel is fascinating, a sort of book within a book, with extra variations and themes. Man in the High Castle has everything: art, philosophy, plot, character, suspense, action, and character. I'll probably write about it in my next post. 

Life is moving fast. I'm trying to keep up day-to-day with what is really important. Inevitably, this means that I haven't been playing video games, instead preferring to read, write, and nap [sleep is the best 'drug' you can ever use]. I'm finding that my time is becoming more precious so playing Overwatch just doesn't do it for me anymore. I still play Smash Ultimate with my buddies when I hang out with them. But when I'm by myself I'm going to stick with the more important stuff, reading, writing, napping, and playing guitar. 

Thanks for reading, I look forward to the next post about Man in the High Castle. 

Science Fiction, An Important Genre

Science Fiction (and Fantasy) is a hellova genre. Its what got me into reading a lot, turning me into a hardcore book worm. I used to read a lot of the classics around 2011, back when I was a college student. I was into things like Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Walden, and The Sound and Fury. Once I dropped out of college I stopped reading altogether for a while. Then around 2013, I started reading again, mostly inspired by science fiction.

I've read a lot of science fiction novels and short stories since then. Phillip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, William Gibson, Issac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, Octavia Butler, Douglas Adams, Neal Stephenson, you name it. I began to build a love for ideas through these writers, at first enamored with the video game-ish ideas that can come from science fiction but eventually coming to an understanding that ideas from science fiction can help me to form ideas about real life. From Dune I learned about sociology and ecology. From Ursula K LeGuin I learned about anthropology. From Robert Heinlein I learned how conservative values can impact ones' writing. From Alfred Bester I learned that writing doesn't have to be fanciful to make an huge impact. These things are important.

Science Fiction is one of the most important genres today. Sci-Fi movies and novels help shape people's ideas and development of ideas when it comes to AI, automatons in the work place, consciousness, etc. This is an important ethical dilemma. Which is where science fiction has led me.

One day I was bored and typed in on google "oldest science fiction novels". It brought me to a Wikipedia page that listed Sir Tomas More's Utopia, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Margaret Cavendash's Blazing World, and Kepler's Somnium.

I read Utopia and New Atlantis and didn't look back (although I want to read both of them again). At first the archaic writing style of the 1500s was super difficult to understand. However, I kept reading and reading until it eventually made "more" sense, which took quite a while and a lot of google dictionary searching. The ideas of Utopia and New Atlantis were very utopian, socialistic, and communistic. From there I read The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, which I found on a pdf through google.

That's not even the end of this quest (thumbs up fantasy nerds). After I read up on some socialist/communist ideas I went even farther back to Thomas Hobbes' political economy-Leviathan, which I'm almost done with. From there I read Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, a collection of essays in which he aims to prove the existence of God, quite an undertaking! For a while I became influenced by his writing, and even started to live a more holy life as a result. Holy as in being a nicer person, not fucking up at work, occasional prayer, diet and exercise. However, I am by no means religious. But the writers from the 1500s and 1600s who inspire me were mostly highly educated men from the Catholic schools.

Once my dad saw I was reading all of this without a context he recommended a great primer for me, which was Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. This book has everything, as in every great idea of man and their originators from early man all the way to Marx and Engels. Russell is not only a philosopher who understands ideas but he's also an engaging writer that knows how to write in a highly educational way without being too technical, meaning anyone can understand if they put in the time and the effort. He's a mathematical person, this is very rare to find in people who are overly mathematical. The Russell book gave me a context for all the philosophy I was reading and will continue to read. If you read this book you will know more about ideas than most of the people you will run across in the general public. It was a great feeling once I finished it, its an 840 page book.

I also read classicist Madeline Miller's two novels Circe and The Song of Achilles, two books based on Greek mythology. From there I learned that I don't have to read fiction/nonfiction standard prose. I started reading the actual Iliad and from there started reading epic poetry of the Western canon. Now I'm reading Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. Although Miller's work isn't science fiction, not quite fantasy, it might as well be because its so highly unusual. Poetry is something I want to explore more of now.

Now we've completed the quest and earned some experience points. The point here is that science fiction has led me to the important things in Western literature. Its one of the most worthy genres out there despite what some people might say. A reader I was conversing with told me, "Science fiction gets a lot of shit but its done much for literature." I couldn't agree more.

Phillip K Dick's The Cosmic Puppets

The Cosmic Puppets was the perfect book to get me back into reading science fiction novels. The story itself is very short (130 pages), the writing is simple, and the theme and plot is also quite simplistic. Let's get into it.

The book starts off with a man going on vacation with his wife to his childhood hometown. Once he gets there he realizes that everything is wrong-all wrong. The streets are all named different names, the people are all different, and nobody can remember anything that Ted Barton (the man) remembers about the whole town. He ends up finding out that he actually died in the record books as a kid. So, he ends up going on a mystery tour (magical, in a way) to figure out everything.

He ends up learning all kinds of stuff. There's a kid who can build golems that can get in and out of the barrier between towns. There's these spirits called Wanderers that can float through objects and they're actually people from the old real town. The book has a strong thematic ending that basically resolves with two gods fighting among themselves and the town is just a small picture in a giant universe. Its kind of a metaphysical kind of horror but the beings themselves gives it a science fiction element because they live as part of the Earth as well as space nebula too. 

It's short, simplistic, and straight to the point. Its not the best thing I've read from Dick but it was cool to read one of his short early works. To think this book had horror, fantasy, and science fiction elements and it was written in 1957! That's like way cool man. Although I'm not the biggest fan of horror in science fiction I do think the science fiction element overpowers the horror and it comes out pretty good.

Check this out if you want something short and fun