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Fans of Philip K. Dick and science fiction might be underwhelmed by The Man in the High Castle since, other than passing mention of cross continental rocket ship travel and a German exploration of Mars, there really isn’t any science fiction or signature PKD craziness or large-scale action; rather, Dick’s 1962 book is alternative history, the aftermath in the United States after Germany and Japan win World War II and a novel of ideas.

There are a number of crisscrossing plots, colorful main characters, applications of the ancient Chinese I Ching; however, by my reading, the heartbeat of the novel is the author’s historical, political, social commentary, reflections on cross-cultural miscommunication and observations on racial and ethnic prejudice �� all laced with a healthy dose of black humor.

Ah, black humor, as in this snatch of dialogue when judo instructor Juliana Frink talks with a fellow American, Joe the truck drive in a Colorado small-town: ““Did you hear the Bob Hope show the other night?�� she called. “He told this really funny joke, the one where this German major is interviewing some Martians. The Martians can’t provide racial documentation about their grandparents being Aryan, you know. So the German major reports back to Berlin that Mars is populated by Jews.”�� Meanwhile, the German Reichs Consul in San Francisco, Freiherr Hugo Reiss, doesn’t fine Bob Hope one bit funny; in point of fact, he thinks the Aryan super-race might indeed find Jews on Mars since those loathsome Jewish vermin are everywhere else.

PKD 1960s-style self-referential postmodern metafiction, anyone? Novel within a novel: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen is about what the present day world would look like if Germany and Japan lost the war. Abendsen’s novel is all the rage, an honest-to-goodness American literary fad (the book is banned back in Germany and in lands such as the Eastern United States controlled by Germany).

Curiously, rumors have it the author of the outrageous Grasshopper bestseller is a paranoid living in isolation on a Wyoming mountain in a fortress-like house surrounded by barbed wire and heavy artillery, calling himself The Man in the High Castle. Perhaps the author’s armed, isolated fortress isn’t such a bad idea since Freiherr Hugo Reiss has a predictable Nazi reaction when reading the book: “Maybe this Abendsen is a Jew. They’re still at it trying to poison us. . . . Actual name probably Abendstein. . . . If Abendstein should be found dangling from the ceiling some fine morning, it would be a sobering notice to anyone who might be influenced by this book. We would have had the last word. Written the postscript.��

And such a paranoid racist mindset is hardly confined to the German Nazis. Here are the thoughts of Robert Childan, a good old American boy from San Francisco, after his less than satisfying business dealings with someone who is Jewish: “We live in a society of law and order, where Jews can’t pull their subtleties on the innocent. We’re protected. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize the racial characteristics when I saw him. Evidently I’m easily deceived. . . . Without law, I’d be at their mercy. He could have convinced me of anything. It’s a form of hypnosis. They can control an entire society.��

With its scathing satire on culture and society and novel within a novel, in many ways The Man in the High Castle reminded me more of JR by William Gaddis than PKD’s other novels. Similar to Gaddis, all the men and women are more than happy to spout their opinions and observations about the arts and books and literature; and more than happy to make strident pronouncements about culture, history and race, not only on the Jews but, among others, Blacks, Italians, Japanese, Germans, Swedes, White Americans, Puerto Ricans, Irish. Turns out, the author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy claims his nightmarish novel is about the state of the world as it currently exists. Perhaps PKD is telling us indirectly he is making a similar claim in his The Man in the High Castle.