In the High Castle

Can Science Fiction ever merit the title of Great Literature?  Sure.  To date, has any work of science fiction Merited that Moniker?  Therein lies a tale.

As I have noted often, the Library of America is doing an invaluable service in putting out volumes of the Great Books of America in editions which generate genuine tactile pleasure when being read.  They recently put out their first science fiction set: the collected novels of Philip K Dick.  If you just asked “Who?,” you are not alone.

Dick’s claim to Mainstream Fame?  He wrote the novel on which the movie Blade Runner was based.  Blade Runner starred Harrison Ford.  A big movie.  Also, an incoherent movie.  The theatrical release was followed by a director’s release and an extended release, all in some attempt to provide some coherence to the movie.

Beyond that novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Dick wrote many other novels, of which, unless you are an aficionado, you have never heard. Yet, here they are in a three (3!) volume boxed (boxed!) set put out by that Grand Arbiter of Taste, the Library of America.

Now, I like Science Fiction—one of my earliest literary loves—and I like Great Books—a later developed literary love—so this here is what you might call a match made in heaven.  Yet, I have read three Dick novels before now, and was rather underwhelmed.  So, imagine my surprise when Dick got the LOA treatment.  Naturally, I bought the set.

I read the first book: The Man in the High Castle.  I had never heard of this book before, yet here it is, in my Great Book set.  And…

Well, it’s an alternative history (the Axis Powers won WWII) in which an alternative history (about the Axis Powers Losing WWII (but, not the history of the world in which the Reader lives)) plays a role.  The book screams, “Look!  I am being Doubly Clever!”  A book I am reading in the real world about an alternative history in which yet another alternative history plays a role.  At this point, you say, “Wow!  Deep, Man.  Deep.”  Then, as an added bonus, you get lots and lots of references to the I Ching (the novel is in Japanese-occupied California—so obviously we need a role for that Great Book of…China?  (yeah, I know, Japan, China...what’s the difference?)), so the novel has this whole ersatz Eastern Religion feel.  (You will be surprised to learn that the book was published in 1962.)  Then the titular character wanders in at the end of the novel in order to be there when the I Ching reveals that the alternative history is true.  So, in the alternative history I am reading, the alternative history in the alternative history is really true, which then means that maybe the world in which I am reading this book is not the real world, but the alternative history I am reading is really true.  All together now:  ‘Whoa!  This is mind-blowing!”   

The novel never really goes anywhere.  Lots of story lines start, wander along, and then wander off, but Dick writes well enough that the journey is a painless stroll.  Now after reading four of his novels, I am convinced that he is one of those authors who writes books which are really groovy when you are on an LSD trip.