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The Man in the High Castle

The whole health care debate has left me a little burnt-out.  The news has been flooded lately with debates about the health care bill, crazy tea party idiots, and new polls telling us how Americans feel about the bill.  I think that I have said everything there is to say about the health care argument and how I feel about it.  I have decided to take a day off from politics, and go off topic for this post.  I am going to tell you about my new favorite author.  I didn't know about this author until recently, and I’m assuming that many other people haven't heard of him either.

My new favorite author is Philip K. Dick.  This man wrote the stories that were responsible for the films Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and Total Recall. In January, I picked up a copy of Mr. Dick’s first novel, The Man in the High Castle, and absolutely loved it.  The Man in the High Castle is a novel that presents an alternate reality of the United States, post World War II.  Here is the description that is found on the back of the book:

“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 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 nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.”

Since January, in addition to The Man in the High Castle, I have also read the following titles from Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the movie Blade Runner was adapted from this novel), Ubik (which is found on Time Magazine’s top 100 novels of all time list), Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, The Divine Invasion, and a number of short stories written by Dick, including Minority Report and Total Recall.

I never before considered myself a fan of science fiction writing.  But after reading the above referenced titles, I have decided that I am now a fan of the genre.  Even if science fiction is not your thing, I highly recommend checking out this author.  Mr. Dick will show you how entertaining and interesting science fiction novels can be.

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