Juliana becomes interested enough in the book that she agrees to go on a road trip with Joe in her Studebaker to meet the author, Absenden, in person. Joe introduces Juliana to the book he is reading on his travels, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Juliana proceeds over to a truck stop where she meets Joe, an Italian war veteran with whom she begins having sex. Baynes is most likely on board this rocket. Though not stated, the reader can infer that Mr. Juliana Frink, Frank’s estranged wife living in Colorado, emerges from the studio where she teaches Judo and notices a German rocket flying westward in the sky above.From the hexagram, he determines that his client is not who he claims to be.
He uses the I Ching to divine how to handle an important contact from Sweden inbound on a German rocket, a certain Mr. Nobosuke Tagomi is the trade commissioner of San Francisco.
Using the I Ching, he divines that he should go into business for himself. He loses his job after an outburst at work. He works for a man named Wyndam-Matson, who runs a company that produces fake American antiques. Frank Frink is an American Jew, also living in San Francisco, hiding in plain sight thanks to plastic surgery and changing his last name from Fink.Yet it is gradually revealed that he internally harbors a racist dislike for all Asians, thinking slurs and epithets to himself, and makes certain business decisions out of self-loathing. He has adopted many Japanese mannerisms, in both his speech pattern and business etiquette. Robert Childan is a San Franciscan dealer of “Americana,” or antiques of authentic American origin which are extremely popular collector’s items amongst the ruling Japanese elites in the Pacific States.Each chapter of the book is written from the perspective of a different person: What keeps this book interesting to today’s readers is Dick’s characterization. These days, it would seem Dick’s book is asking a kind of well-worn alternate history question: What if we lost WWII? Back in 1962, the idea was striking enough to win Dick the Hugo award. Canada appears to remain a sovereign state of its own, as many characters reference fleeing there for safety.
The United States are divided into three areas: the Japanese-occupied West Coast, renamed the Pacific States of America, the German-occupied United States extending from the East Coast to Louisiana and all the way up, and the Rocky Mountain States extending from Texas up to North Dakota, and west to Idaho and Arizona. The combined Axis Powers then attack the US on opposite coasts, fighting inward until the Allied surrender in 1948. The Nazis conquer the USSR and exterminate most of its citizens while Japan wipes out the entire US naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. This leaves the US unprepared to assist Britain and Russian against the Germans, and unable to defend against Japan in the Pacific. Neither President would manage to bring the United States out of the Great Depression. Many people in our society ask, “How would World War II have been different if Hitler had been assassinated at Munich?” The Man in the High Castle presents a world that asks the opposite question what if Giuseppe Zangara’s factual attempted assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 was successful, leaving John Nance Garner to be President? According to Dick, he would be voted out of office in 1940 for John W. Because these facts are brought up when appropriate to the characters’ situations, they are presented out of order and incomplete except for what I can gather. In off moments the various characters recount, through dialog snippets and random thoughts, the events that led to the United States losing World War II. I re-read it every couple of months, wondering how I as a writer can possibly touch upon its greatness. Though the fictional events in the book take place in the year it was released, the characters and events are as vibrant today as at any time. This remains one of my favorite novels to date. Dick’s 1962 Hugo award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle tells the story of an ensemble cast of international characters living in an alternate reality where Germany and Japan won World War II, and large portions of the United States remain under separate Japanese and Nazi occupation.