Man in the High Castle

In a hilltop cabin, his "high castle," surrounded by barbed wire, a solitary writer conceives an imaginary account of history-in which FDR was not assassinated, in which Italy betrayed the Axis countries and the Allies won World War II. His novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, is of course banned in the eastern portion of postwar America, dominated as it is by Nazi occupation forces. But in the Pacific States of America, which Japanese victors control and where the Oriental race is superior despite its puppet white government, where the I Ching-the ancient Chinese Book of Changes which predicts the future and understands the presenthas replaced the Bible and a more permissive, humane philosophy dominates, the novel is tolerated by the authorities. And its incredible, fantastic image of a "mythical" postwar world is glimpsed against the "real" world of the present in

Against this background of a globe controlled by Germany and Japan, Philip K. DicK tells this bizarre, hilarious, terrifying, electrifying tale: of a dealer in historic U. S. trivia who maintains an exclusive antique shop in San Francisco; of a Jewish artisan hiding from the Reich racial laws and of his estranged wife languishing in the backwater country of the Rocky Mountain States; of a traveling "Swedish businessman" who is much more than he seems; of a Gestapo killer sent on the track of the man in the high castle. Mr. Dick's vision of contemporary America is of a world that never was. But it might have been-and his brilliantly satiric image combines with the high suspense of his story to make THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE an uncommonly original entertainment.

Philip Dick lives, with wife and children, in "a Campbell-Wong glass-sided house in the country north of San Francisco with a library of Jung and Zen Buddhism, cherry plum trees and central black-iron open fireplace, a passion for local fish and game, Paul Tillich and science fiction." Mr. Dick is the author of a number of science fiction stories and novels, and his novel, Eye in the Sky, was selected by Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine as one of the best fifty science fiction works of its decade.

IT IS THE MORNING AFTER DOOMSDAY
NEW YORK...
under the heel of enemy Storm Troopers...

ALL OF AMERICA...a slave labor camp... Against this nightmare-come-true, one man, alone in a high castle surrounded by barbed wire, pits his solitary courage.

"A SEMINAL WORK IN SCIENCE-FICTION-PHILIP K. DICK'S BEST NOVEL, A MASTERFULLY DETAILED ALTERNATE WORLD PEOPLED BY SUPERBLY REALIZED CHARACTERS." Harry Harrison

"REMARKABLE, FASCINATING. IT'S ALL HERE, EXTRAPOLATION SUSPENSE, ACTION, ART PHILOSOPHY, PLOT, CHARACTER: REALLY A SUPERIOR WORK OF FICTION." Avram Davidson

"A CLASSIC. ONE THAT IS GOING TO BEAR REREADING, TOO - NOT FOR- WHAT HAPPENS, THOUGH THAT IS SUBTLY AND BELIEVABLY WORKED OUT-BUT FOR THE WAY THE ALTERNATE WORLD HAS BEEN CREATED DOWN TO THE LAST NUANCE." P. Schuyler Miller, Analog

To Robert Childan, the end of the war had been a new beginning-although he never would have believed it possible. Once, not long before, he had owned a small secondhand bookstore in one of San Francisco's poorer neighborhoods. But as more and more Japanese discovered the quaint charms of antique butter churns, old icecream makers and other American artifacts, Childan found himself in a position of expertise. He had grown up with such things -and so now his new shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc., was a success. To Frank Frink, the new regime was not exactly paradise, but he knew it could have been worse. Back in 1947, on Capitulation Day, he had vowed revenge, and buried his Service weapons underground - well wrapped and oiled for the day when he and his buddies would rise up and strike back. Yet time had dimmed his enthusiasm for violence, and he had gradually grown accustomed to the way things were. At least the top men in Tokyo were honest and seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people .they'd conquered. It was more than could be said for the leaders of the Reich. Having just barely managed to win the war, the Germans had first taken care of the rest of the "undesirables." They'd made room for blond, blue-eyed Aryan settlers in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine -then concentrated on expanding their technological empire. Already they were years ahead of their Japanese counterparts in the development of plastics and other synthetic materials-and they were trying to conquer the solar system. And so the victors redesigned society while the losers tried to adjust. Yet there was at least one man whose spirit had not been crushed... one man who could still envision a better world in which the Allies, and not the Axis, had won....

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war-and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany II and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning , novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a I nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.