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An electrifying novel of our world as it might have been

FIRST EDITIONS

1962		Putnams, hb, 62-18262, Oct 1962, 239pp, $3.95, (Robert Galster) {Levack: "Bound in black cloth with red lettering on the front cover and spine. Date code 'D36' [36th week, 1962] on lower left margin of page 239. Top edges stained yellow. No date on the title page. [Putnam normally does not mark first printings, but explicitly marks later printings]"}
1965		Penguin, pb, 002376-3, 1965, 236pp, 5/- (Max Ernst){also: an edition (illustrated) for “85c” ???}

HISTORY

    In early 1961 we find a glum PKD skulking around the house with Anne and the kids, somewhat at a loss and not knowing what to do. Hiding out in his $25 a month rented hut up the road which he called the Hovel, and reading Carl Jung and Taoist texts. Becoming interested in the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching, and consulting it with Anne on many occasions in the summer of 1961, asking questions about life, the universe and whether or not they should sell their old car. And though Anne got bored with it, Phil continued to use the I Ching daily.

Finally, through lack of anything better to do, he started helping Anne with her jewelry making business:

I did the seven stages of silver polishing for a while, and I built her bench, mounted motors for her, etc., and even made the first important sales of her wares.

But Phil was not happy:

I didn't enjoy making jewelry. I had no talent whatsoever. She had the talent. She is still a jeweler and a very fine one, making gorgeous stuff which she sells to places like Neiman-Marcus. It's great art. But I couldn't do anything except polish what she made.

I decided that I'd better tell her I was working on a book so I wouldn't have to polish her jewelry all day long. We had a little cabin, and I went over there with a sixty-five-dollar portable typewriter made in Hong Kong -- the "e" key was stuck on it. I started with nothing but the name "Mister Tagomi" written on a scrap of paper, no other notes. I had been reading a lot of Oriental philosophy, reading a lot of Zen Buddhism, reading the I Ching. That was the Marin County zeitgeist at that point, Zen Buddhism and the I Ching. I just started right out and kept on trucking. It was either that or go back to polishing jewelry.

Mr. Tagomi is, of course, the hero of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. PKD speaks of his origins further in a 1970 letter:

I had gotten involved with my quondam wife’s jewelry business: polishing silver and the like, as depicted in the novel. As far as I was concerned the period in my life in which I was a sf writer had ended, not with a bang and not even a whimper. But then one day as I was driving to my cabin in Inverness, Calif., a thought entered my mind. Mr. Tagomi. I got to the cabin, wrote down his name, and then I saw him seated in his office, keeping the ultimate of evil at bay in his own small fashion. And, with no further planning or notes, I wrote the book.

The I Ching was involved from the beginning. In 1961 Phil’s friend, Iskandar Guy – also a devotee of the I Ching – in conversation with Lawrence Sutin remembers hearing

Phil complain that the oracle could speak with a forked tongue. Guy recalls: "I told him, ‘It goes back at least to 1165 BC. Who are we to question an entity functioning at that level all this time?’ He said, ‘Fuck it, I’ll fix it – I’ll write a novel based on it." …

But he was not writing it yet. The situation re the jewelry business had to be resolved. In 1976 Dick told Daniel DePrez:

MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE was an anomaly in my writing. I had given up writing. I had actually decided to give up writing, and was helping my wife in her jewelry business. And I wasn't happy. She was giving me all the shit part to do, and I decided to pretend I was writing a book. And I said, "Well, I'm writing a very important book. And to make the fabrication convincing, I actually had to start typing. And I had no notes, I had nothing in mind, except for years I had wanted to write that idea, about Germany and Japan actually having beaten the United States. And without any notes, I simply sat down and began to write, simply to get out of the jewelry business.

Anne disagrees that it was all her fault. Phil, she says, became so enthusiastic that he threatened to take over the jewelry making as his own:

I think he saw it as a way for him to have a normal business. He found himself trapped in writing at the time because he couldn’t really make enough money to raise a family on it – I think he was real sensitive about that. He was a great jewelry maker, he had talent. I think he was so mad I pushed him out – that’s why he talked so badly about it.

Not only did Anne push Phil out of her jewelry business, she pushed him out of the house altogether. Earlier Phil had rented a hut (the ‘Hovel’) up the road which he next determined to move into so he could write and leave Anne in peace to her creations. He moved his typewriter, stereo and books into the Hovel and despite Anne’s pleas and his own desires stuck to his guns and worked there from then on.

His first novel written there was THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. With the I Ching to hand and the name ‘Mr. Tagomi’ written on a scrap of paper PKD sat down to write.

But, of course, it was not as simple as that. Even though he began the novel with only a name, PKD had been thinking about it for a long time:

I did seven years of research for THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Seven years of research: it took me seven years to amass the material on the Nazis and the Japanese. Especially on the Nazis. And that's probably the reason why it's a better novel than most of my novels: I knew what I was talking about. I had prime-source material at the Berkeley-Cal library right from the Gestapo’s mouth--stuff that had been seized after World War II. Stuff that was marked for the eyes of "the higher police" only. I had to read what those guys wrote in their private journals in order to write THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

How Dick approached the underpinnings of the story also took some thought:

I had to structure out the decisions that the Nazis would have had to make, the changes in history that would have permitted them to win that war. It would be a very long list of things that would have had to happen, and they're not all in MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Just for example, Spain would've had to grant them the right to go through, you know, from France to take Gibraltar and close off the Mediterranean. That war was not really as close a call as we thought it was. I mean, it is just not that easy to defeat Russia -- as certain people in history have found out. I hope we're not about to find that out ourselves.

The I Ching was also a great help. Asked by interviewer Arthur Byron Cover whether he used the I Ching as a plotting device, PKD responded:

Once. I used it in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE because a number of characters used it. In each case when they asked a question, I threw the coins and wrote the hexagram lines they got. That governed the direction of the book. Like in the end when Juliana Frink is deciding whether or not to tell Hawthorne Abendsen that he is the target of assassins, the answer indicated that she should. Now if it had said not to tell him, I would have had her not go there. But I would not do that in any other book.

Of the writing of the novel itself, PKD said that this one was done differently from his normal approach:

{…} mostly I wrote for the editor. To me it wasn't the reader who bought it, it was the editor who bought it; it was as simple as that. The big change came when I wrote THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, because the book was not written for Donald Wollheim. I had sold TIME OUT OF JOINT, and had gotten the idea of selling a hardcover novel. With MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, I had no concept of an audience at all. I had no concept even of an editor. It was a pure relationship between me and the characters in the novel, and it stayed pretty much that way.

And speaking of these characters, PKD when asked why he loved writing and creating characters, said:

It's not generally recognized that the author is lonely. Writing is a solitary occupation. When you start your novel you seal yourself off from your family and friends. But in this there's a paradox, because you then create new companions. I would say I write because there are not enough people in the world who can give me enough companionship. To me the great joy in writing a book is showing some small person, some ordinary person doing something in a moment of great valor, for which he would get nothing and which would be unsung in the real world. The book, then, is the song about his valor. You know, people think that the author wants to be immortal, to be remembered through his work. No. I want Mr. Tagomi from THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE always to be remembered. My characters are composites of what I've actually seen people do, and the only way for them to be remembered is through my books.

Mr. Tagomi was a favorite character of Dick’s and when the novel was finished he had a difficult time separating himself from him. In a late night soliloquy in 1968 Phil wrote of the heartbreak of the writer:

I promise myself: I will never write another novel. I will never again imagine people from whom I will eventually be cut off. I tell myself this... and, secretly and cautiously, I begin another book.

But to backtrack for a moment, let’s take a look at the publication chronology of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

In the summer and Fall of 1961 PKD was in his hovel banging out HIGH CASTLE on his old Japanese typewriter with the missing "e" key. By 29 Nov 1961 the novel was completed.

When he was done with the writing he proudly showed the manuscript to his wife, Anne. But she was not impressed, saying

        I said, "What the hell!" And THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE was bought by Putnam's for $1500, which isn't a great deal more than she had prophesied.

Acceptance by Putnam’s came quickly. By Dec 10, 1961 PKD was informed of the sale. He was soon doing a rewrite for his editor at Putnam’s, Pete Israel.

Dick, of course, was wondering whether Putnam’s – a mainstream publisher – would market HIGH CASTLE as science fiction or mainstream. In a letter to Tony Boucher PKD expanded on this:

I called Pete Israel, my editor at Putnam's, after talking to you, and he assured me that they "could have it both ways": market their printing of MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in a mainstream type way as well as a way that would appeal to the s-f reader, especially in terms of my name. Pete said, "Of course, I guess you're not as well-known as Heinlein, are you?" In a rather hopeful tone, as if he were wondering if maybe I was as well-known, and how nice that would be, like Pooh wondering if there was another jar of honey, or had he eaten the last, etc. "Pete," I said, "I may not be as well-known as Heinlein, but Tony Boucher says --" and here, I admit I attributed to you certain favorable statements as to me & my work, which, I could tell, did not fall on deaf ears. As they are now just copy-editing the MS, this is my last time to make any pitch to them ... so forgive me if I used you as a totem god mask of Power and Magic by which to make effective my wish…

As it was, Putnam’s published THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE as sort of both mainstream and science fiction, calling it "An electrifying novel of our world as it might have been" on the cover of their edition which came out at the end of October 1962.

But despite this have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too decisiveness on the part of Putnam’s, Doubleday selected the novel for their Science Fiction Book Club in late 1962 and the SFBC edition came out in early December. PKD acknowledged this, saying

It did get tremendous reviews. Part of that was due to the good fortune that it was picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club. Had it not been picked up by them, it would not have won the Hugo Award, because the edition would have been too small.

The SFBC edition was published only a couple of months after the Putnam first edition and is practically identical to it in looks, even down to having Putnam’s and not Doubleday as the publisher. However, for collector’s, the first edition is scarce and can cost from $300 to over $1000 depending on condition. The SFBC edition on the other hand can be had for around $50.

As to the reviews of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Dick was generally happy, thanking Avram Davidson at F & SF for promoting it. But Tony Boucher, Davidson’s ex-stablemate at F & SF, who you’d think would be most enthusiastically behind it, didn’t care for it too much. While listening to the radio one day, PKD heard Boucher pan the novel:

Tony Boucher called it a failure; I heard him review it on the radio, and he said that it was not a science-fiction novel, it was actually just a mainstream novel, once you got past the alternate-world premise. Later he came up to me and said that he now felt that it was a breakthrough novel. Donald Wollheim said, "It is sick, dated, and not science fiction." But most of the criticism was very positive.

What Wollheim actually said on one occasion if not this one was:

And of course I read Philip K. Dick with bemused interest. Essentially most of what he says is true, and curiously enough much of what is said in opposition is also true. To attempt to go through it and pick nits in disagreement would take more pages and more documentation than it could be worth, and everything said could in turn be rebutted. The way I feel about it now is that having lived in the USA of 1945-1964, none of us are in a position to criticize where the question of individual guilt is concerned.

However, personally I am numbered among those who found MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE irritating, outmoded, and sick. Whatever its merits as literature, it was a totally wrong choice for a Hugo. It is questionable by what definition or standard it could be called science-fiction. Dick has written some great science fiction stories, but this wasn’t among them.

Don Wollheim, though, no matter what he thought of HIGH CASTLE as science fiction, was not about to let his old stalwart go without at least complaining. Ed Meskys recalls PKD telling him that

Don Wollheim kept writing him complaining now that he had a major success with CASTLE he would be abandoning Don and Ace.

Of course this didn’t happen. In fact, PKD’s next novel, WE CAN BUILD YOU, written in 1962, was published by Wollheim in 1972 when he was editing his own line of paperbacks, DAW Books, and THE GAME-PLAYERS OF TITAN (written late 1962/early 1963) was published by Ace Books in 1963. Dick would have several more paperback originals published by Ace over the next 20 years. But… the stranglehold was broken. With the success of HIGH CASTLE and its subsequent winning of the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of 1962, PKD was now able to attract the attention of other publishers, notably Ballantine Books where Tony Boucher was now an editor. MARTIAN TIME SLIP, which PKD wrote in late 1962, was sold to Ballantine and published by them in 1964. With the success of the SFBC edition of HIGH CASTLE, hardback sf publisher Doubleday also got into the act, snapping up several of PKD’s novels in the coming years.

When HIGH CASTLE won the Hugo Award, it made a difference to PKD’s life and writing. Commenting on this later in his life PKD wrote:

Now, most readers do not know how little SF writers were paid. I had been earning about $6000 a year. In the year following the Hugo Award, I earned $12000, and close to that in the subsequent years (1965-68). And I wrote at a fantastic speed; I produced twelve novels in two years... which must be a record of some sort. I could never do this again -- the physical stress was enormous... but the Hugo was there to tell me that what I wanted to write was what a good number of readers wanted to read. Amazing as it seems!

An interesting sidelight to HIGH CASTLE’s publishing history is what happened to the novel when it was published in Japan and Germany. In a 1968 letter PKD wrote to the Japanese translator of HIGH CASTLE. No doubt he had been told about the Hayakawa Shobo edition of 1965. Here’s the contents of this letter:

I am sorry to be putting so many questions to you, but all this is very important to me. I am sorry for causing you any inconvenience, and any and all answers you might give me to the above questions would be quite valuable to me. Thank you very much for your trouble and time, and I will hope to hear from you.

Mr. Kawaguchi replied to this letter and PKD commented on it in his essay "The Mainstream That Through The Ghetto Flows":

First of all, he said, "Your book wasn't any good to start with.'' Secondly, he said, "You've also confused Chinese culture and Japanese culture. The Chinese are inferior people, and the I Ching's Chinese and not Japanese. No Japanese would ever use some Confucian classic. Only foreigners use those." I was quite amazed at how up-front he was in his contempt for the book, but it's still in print in Japan. It's sold very well, and I've made almost thirty-five dollars off of it. Over a ten-year period.

In this same interview, PKD talks about the German edition of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE:

They didn't know that I could read German. A publisher bought it in Germany and began to translate it, and when I learned that they'd bought it, I said, "Oh, no, you're not going to put that book out in Germany without letting me see the German translation." I said, "Listen, Scott, we're not going to let them publish that book lest I read the galleys. It's gotta be sine qua non. It's gotta be a condition." Well, they didn't have galleys. They just had the typescript, so they had to send that to us. When I started reading that thing, I could see that they had destroyed the book. They'd turned it into a travesty of itself. I actually burst into tears when I finished reading it. Here was my best novel, right, and they said, "We didn't know you could read German." They actually said that in their letter. They gave me five days to read it, and my German got very fluent. I stayed up night and day with my Cassell's German-English Dictionary and I read every single word, comparing the German line by line with the English. They hadn't changed any of the political parts--all the anti-Nazi stuff was still there. They'd just turned it into a cheap adventure novel. I remember one part where it read: Tagomi stolzierte einher wie Wyatt Earp." Now, I never mentioned Wyatt Earp in my book. "Tagomi swaggered like Wyatt Earp"! "Tagomi swaggered like Vyatt Oorp"!

Considered by many to be a masterpiece, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE would, in the alternate universe where I might rate PKD’s novels, deserve ô ô ô ô ô

OTHER EDITIONS             For Cover Pix Click Here:

• SFBC, hb, ?, Nov 1962, 218pp, $1.20 (Galster) {Levack: "Bound in black paper boards with orange lettering on the front cover and the spine. Top edges stained orange. No indication of edition or printing. Date code 'D45' on lower left margin of page 239."} Cover pic same as 1st edition.
• Popular Library, pb, SP250, Jan 1964, 191pp, $0.50 (?)
• Popular Library, pb, 60-2289, 1968, ?, $0.60 (?)
• Berkley, pb, Z2543, Apr 1974, 253pp, $1.25 (Richard Powers) 425-02543-1254
• Berkley, pb, D3080, 1974, ?, $1.50 (?)
• Gollancz, hb, 01958-1, May 1975, 222pp, L3.20 {Levack: "Bound in blue paper boards with gold lettering on the spine. '1975' on the title page."}
• UKSFBC, Reader’s Union, hb, ?, Mar 1976, 222pp, ? (?) {Levack: Bound in dark red paper with gold lettering on the spine}
• Penguin, pb, ?, Apr 1976, ?, 60p (Peter Goodfellow)
• Penguin, pb, ?, Nov 1978, ?, 75p (Goodfellow)
• Berkley, pb, 03908, 1978, ?, $1.75 (Powers) {6th}
• Berkley, 04323, 1979, ?, $1.95 (?)
• Gregg Press, hb, 2476-9, Apr 1979, 239pp, $9.95 (?) [+K272]
• Easton, hb, ?, 1980, ?, ? (?)
• Berkley, pb, 05051-3, 1981, ?, $2.25 (?) {9th}
• Berkley, pb, 06321-6, Dec 1983, ?, $2.50 (?) {11th}
• Berkley, pb, 07660-1, Jun 1984, ?, $2.75 (?) {12th}
• Berkley, pb, 10143-6, 1984, ?, $2.95 (?) {14th}
• Berkley, pb, 10143-6, Nov 1986, ?, $2.95 (?)
• Penguin, pb, ?, Sep 1986, ?, ?, (?)
• Penguin, tp, 009975-X, Mar 1987, 249pp, L3.95 (Fred Gambino) {Locus: 0-14-008875-X}
• Easton Press, hb, Mar 1988, 239pp, ?, (?) {Locus: . Part of the “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” editions; illustrated by Richard Powers. Leather-bound and gilt-edged}
• Vintage, tp, 74067-8, Jul 1992, 259pp, $10.00 (Heidi North) 0-679-74067-8
• ROC UK, pb, ?, 1993, 249pp, L4.99 (Chris Moore) 0-14-017172-X
• BOMC, hb, ?, 2001, ?, ? (?) "Science Fiction Pioneers"(UK)
• Orion, hb, ?, Oct 2001, ?, L15 (?) "SF Masterworks" (UK) 0575073357
• Penguin, pb, ?, July 1999, 256pp, L7 (?) 0-140-28562-8

These Putnam's editions are in the GSM collection; we are uncertain of the dates of publication but suspect that all are SFBC editions:

		Putnam's, hb, 03686, 1962 suspect late 70s, ?, ? (?) note slightly different numbers inside dustjacket (O3686/3686)
		Putnam's, hb, 3686, 1962 suspect early 80s, ?, ? (?)

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

• La Tribuna ?, sfbc 4, 1965, 324pp, Lit 2000, (Rocco Borella) {tr. into Italian by Romolo Minelli as LA SVASTICA SUL SOLE} 

• 		Born Pockets, pb, ?, 1968, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Dutch as LAARZEN IN DE NACHT}
  		Club de Livre d'Anticipation, hb, 24, 1970, ?, FF 36 (?) {tr. into French by Bruno Martin as LE MAITRE DU HAUT CHATEAU // DOCTEUR BLOODMONEY}{Levack: "Bound in blue cloth with silver lettering on the spine. Large logo stamped in silver on the fron cover. Issued with clear plastic dustjacket."}
  		Stig Vendelkaer, pb, ?, 1973, 228pp, ?, (?) {tr. into Danish by Jorgen Beck-Jesson as MANDEN I DEN STORE FESTNING}

•  
• Konig Verlag, pb, SF 34, 1973, ?, DM 4.80 (?) {tr. into German by Heinz Nagel as DAS ORAKEL VOM BERGE}
•  

• 		Minotauro, pb, ?, 1974, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Spanish as EL HOMBRE EN EL CASTILLO}
  		Minotauro, pb, ?, 1980c, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Spanish as EL HOMBRE EN EL CASTILLO}
  		Minotauro, pb, ?, 1980c ?, ? (?) {tr. into Spanish as EL HOMBRE EN EL CASTILLO}
  		?, pb, ?, 1980c, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Spanish as EL HOMBRE EN EL CASTILLO}
  		J'ai Lu, pb, 567, 1974, ?, ?, (?) {tr. into French by Jacques Parsons as LE MAITRE DU HAUT CHATEAU}
  		Nord, hb, Cosmo Oro 29, 1977, ?, Lit 3500 (?) {tr. into Italian by Roberta Rambelli as LA SVASTICA SUL SOLE} ISBN: 88-429-0326-4 {Levack: "Bound in blue paper boards with white lettering on the spine."}
  		Elsevier SF, pb, ?, 1979, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Dutch as DE MAN IN HET HOGE KASTEEL}
  		J'ai Lu, pb, ?, 1980c, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French as LE MAITRE DU HAUT CHATEAU}

• Bastei Lubbe, pb, 22021, 1980, ?, DM 5.80 (?) {tr. into German by Heinz Nagel as DAS ORAKEL VOM BERGE}

• 		Czytelnik -- Warsaw, ?, ? 1981, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish as CZLOWIEK Z WYSOKIEGO ZAMKU}
  		?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish as CZLOWIEK Z WYSOKIEGO ZAMKU}
  		Hayakawa, pb, SF568, 1984, ?, ?, (?) {tr. into Japanese}

• Bastei Lubbe, pb, 24117, ????, 285pp, DM 7.80 (?) {tr. into German by Heinz Nagel as DAS ORAKEL VOM BERGE} ISBN: 3-404-24117-7

  		Ocupuc, hb, 5-7001-0012-6, 1991, 444pp, ? (?) {tr. into Russian; includes: SOLAR LOTTERY and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?}
  		Fantastika, hb, 2, 1991c, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Bulgarian as YOBEKbT BNCOKNR 3AMbK in omnibus that includes THE COSMIC PUPPETS}
  		Editions Spotkania -- Warsaw, hb, ?, 1991, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish by Lech Jeczmyk as CZLOWIEK Z WYSOKIEGO ZAMKU}

•  

• "Lenizdat" Publishing House -- St. Petersbourg, hb, 5-289-01427-6, 1992, 606pp, ? (?) {tr. into Russian as CHELOVEK V VYSOKOM ZAMKE includes: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and THE 3 STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH}

•  
• WSOY, ?, 18368-7, 1992, ?, ? (?) (Jukka Murtosaari) {tr. into Finnish as ORAAKKELIN KIRJA}

• Laser, ?, ? 1992, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Czechoslovakian asMUZ z VYSOKEHO ZAMKU}

• Presses de la Cite, ?, ? 1992, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French in Omnibus SUBSTANCE REVE} ISBN: 2-258-03696-8

• Editions Nord, ?,  Narrativa 29, 1993, 292pp, Lit 24000, (?)  {tr. into Italian by R. Valla and L. Signorelli as LA SVASTICA SUL SOLE} ISBN: 88-429-0297-7

• Rossiyskiy - Zapad, hb, ?, 1993, 435pp, ? (?) {tr. into Russian as BIBEL 'NYI TUPIK, Omnibus edition of THE GAME-PLAYERS OF TITAN, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? and THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE}
•  

• 		Zysk i S-ka -- Poznan, ?, Kameleon, 1996, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish by Lech Jeczmyk as CZLOWIEK Z WYSOKIEGO ZAMKU}
  		Fanucci, pb, 59, 1997, 410pp, Lit 12000 (?) {tr. into Italian by Maurizio Nati as LA SVASTICA SUL SOLE} ISBN: 88-347-0562-9 "Bestseller"
  		Heyne, pb, ?, 2000, 347pp, DM 18 Euro 9.20 (?) {tr. into German as AS ORAKEL VOM BERGE} ISBN: 3-453-16411-3
  		?, hb, XblORO 63, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Russian? as YEAOBEK B BblCOKOM 3AMKE}"Hugo Nebula"
  		?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Czechoslovakian as MUZ Z VYSOKEHO ZAMKU}
  		?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Romanian? as OMUL CASTELUL INALT}
  		?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Estonian as MEES KORGES LOSSIS}
  		J'ai Lu, pb, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French as LE MAITRE DU HAUT CHATEAU}
  		J'ai Lu, pb, ?, ?, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French as LE MAITRE DU HAUT CHATEAU}

NOTES

TTHC 370. Fn.11: PKD to Sandra Meisel, Sep 9 1970

TZ pp47-52. Interview by John Boonstra.

See DI 109 111-113

See Science Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3, August 1976. Interview with Daniel DePrez, Sep 10 1976.

See Hour 25. Interview with Mike Hodel.

See Vertex, Vol. 1, no. 6, February 1974. Interviewer: Arthur Byron Cover

See PEPKD 35

See The Patchin Review, No. 5. Oct-Dec 1982, pp2-6. Interviewer John Boonstra.

See PKD OTAKU #11, Sep 2003, p10. Donald A. Wollheim [Phil’s editor at Ace Books] responding to "Naziism and the High Castle". Source: Niekas #10, Dec 1964, p5.

See NIEKAS, No. 34, 1986, pp. 3-4. ‘Bumbejimas : PKD And Me’ by Ed Meskys.

See OAR 181

TDC 70

(PKD:) But mostly I wrote for the editor. To me it wasn't the reader who bought it, it was the editor who bought it; it was as simple as that. The big change came when I wrote THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, because the book was not written for Donald Wollheim. I had sold TIME OUT OF JOINT, and had gotten the idea of selling a hardcover novel. With MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, I had no concept of an audience at all. I had no concept even of an editor. It was a pure relationship between me and the characters in the novel, and it stayed pretty much that way.

{...} {TDC 71:} ...Dick Lupoff put it very well: In 1964 he was at this party, and was discussing with somebody the meaning of the ending of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. And (he said) there was this guy, smoking a cigar, who kept trying to butt into the conversation and say what the ending meant. Finally, Lupoff turned to the guy and said, "Will you please not bother us; we're discussing the ending of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE." And the guy says, "Well, I'm Philip K. Dick, and I wrote it." (laughter) I can see myself standing at the periphery of a circle of my own fans, and they're all discussing some book of mine, and I'm saying, "Um...um...What I think he meant was..." and they turn to me and say, "Butt out, joker." It would either go that way, or they'd want to know what I thought, and that would be a drag...

TDC 73

(PKD:) Yeah. Even Tony Boucher, at first, would not accept THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE as science fiction. Really amazing. I was really surprised that a man of his calibre would say something like this. I heard him review it over KPFA, and he said it was really a mainstream novel. Then I talked to him at a party, and he said, "That book was a breakthrough in science fiction." And I thought, Gee, that just goes to show you the hangup we all have... that if it's good, it's not science fiction, and so on.

TDC 136

Ring Of Fire was intended to be a sequel to THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Phil's Hugo Award-winning tale of an alternate timestream in which the United States and her allies lost the Second World War. The "ring of fire" refers to the ring of volcanoes and earthquake faults around the edge of the North Pacific Ocean which corresponds to the Japanese Empire as it exists at the end of HIGH CASTLE.

{For continuation see: TDC 138}

TSR 16

(PKD:) I did so without preamble; I simply sat down and wrote. And what I wrote was THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. It sold right away, received a number of reviews suggesting that it should win the Hugo, and then, one day, I got a letter from my agent congratulating me for winning the Hugo. Another point had been passed in my career -- and, as before, I didn't realize it. All I knew was that I wanted to write more and more books; the books got better and the publishers were more interested in them.

Now, most readers do not know how little SF writers were paid. I had been earning about $6000 a year. In the year following the Hugo Award, I earned $12000, and close to that in the subsequent years (1965-68). And I wrote at a fantastic speed; I produced twelve novels in two years... which must be a record of some sort. I could never do this again -- the physical stress was enormous... but the Hugo was there to tell me that what I wanted to write was what a good number of readers wanted to read. Amazing as it seems! {PKD, Self Portrait, 1968}

TSR 19

(PKD:) What matters to me is the writing, the act of manufacturing the novel, because while I am doing it, at that particular moment, I am in the world I am writing about. It is real to me, completely and utterly. Then, when I'm finished, and have to stop, withdraw from that world forever -- that destroys me. The men and women have ceased talking.They no longer move. I'm alone, without much money, and, as I said before, nearly 40. Where is Mr. Tagomi, the protagonist in MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE? He has left me; we are cut off from each other. To read the novel does not restore Mr. Tagomi, place him once again where I can hear him talk. Once written, the novel speaks generally to everyone, not specifically to me. When a novel of mine comes out I have no more relationship to it than has anyone who reads it -- far less, in fact, because I have the memory of Mr. Tagomi and all the others... Gino Molinari, for example, in NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, or Leo Bulero in 3 STIGMATA. My friends are dead, and as much as I love my wife, daughter, cat -- none of these nor all of these is enough. The vacuum is terrible. Don't write for a living; sell shoelaces. Don't let it happen to you.

I promise myself: I will never write another novel. I will never again imagine people from whom I will eventually be cut off. I tell myself this... and, secretly and cautiously, I begin another book.

{"Notes Made Late At night By A Weary SF Writer." (1968) First published in Eternity Science Fiction, July 1972.}

TSR 119ff. Sutin reprints these two chapters in full here. However, in the ‘Introduction’ to TSR, Sutin dates these two chapters to 1974 but in the section dealing with HIGH CASTLE itself, he dates the chapters as 1964 (TSR 111). Almost certainly they were written in 1974.

TSR 237

(PKD:) As a science fiction writer I gravitate towards such ideas as this; we in the field, of course, know this idea as the "alternate universe" theme. Some of you I am sure, know that my novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE utilized this theme. There was in it an alternate world in which Germany and Japan and Italy won World War 2. At one point in the novel Mr. Tagomi, the protagonist, somehow is carried over to our world, in which the Axis powers lost. He remained in our world only a short time, and scuttled in fright back to his own universe as soon as he glimpsed or understood what had happened -- and thought no more of it after that; it had been for him a thoroughly unpleasant experience, since, being Japanese, it was for him a worse universe than his customary one. For a Jew, however, it would have been infinitely better -- for obvious reasons.

In THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE I give no real explanation as to why or how Mr.Tagomi slid across into our universe; he simply sat in the park and scrutinized a piece of modern abstract handmade jewelry -- sat and studied it on and on -- and when he looked up, he was in another universe. I didn't explain how or why this happened because I don't know.{...}

{"If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others" (1977)}

TSR 245 {The Metz Speech}

In THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE there is a novelist, Hawthorne Abendsen, who has written an alternate-world novel in which Germany, Italy and Japan lost World War 2. At the conclusion of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, a woman appears at Abendsen's door to tell him what he does not know: that his novel is true; the Axis did indeed lose the war. The irony of this ending -- Abendsen finding out that what he had supposed to be pure fiction spun out of his imagination was in fact true -- the irony is this: that my own supposed imaginitive work THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is not fiction -- or rather is fiction only now, thank God. But there was an alternate world, a previous present, in which that particular time track actualized -- actualized and then was abolished due to intervention at some prior date. I am sure, as you hear me say this, you do not really believe me, or even believe that I believe it myself. but nevertheless it is true. I retain memories of that other world. That is why you will find it again described in the later novel FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID. { See same for continuation}

SF EYE  #14 Spring, 1996 p40

(PKD:) THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE does not appeal to me as much because he's really inhuman, that man in the high castle. I don't think anything he does is funny at all.

(A & F:)Why do you think it won the Hugo?

(PKD:) Well, it's well written. It's a masterpiece. But I don't particularly enjoy it. I mean I appreciate it. I admire it. But I admire it in a detatched sort of intellectual way.

(A & F:) Do you like the character of Mr. Tagomi particularly?

(PKD:) I'm very fond of him, yes.

BGSU Papers

Dear Mr. Kawaguchi,

        I am told by Mr. Fukushima of Hayakawa Shobo & Company that you translated my novel, MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. I wonder if I could ask you several questions about the Japanese edition. Viz.:

Did the novel sell well in Japan?

Were the reviews of the novel favorable? If so, what did the reviewers like, and if not, what did they dislike?

I like Japanese people and Japan (which I would very much like to visit). In the novel did I manage to convey my positive feelings toward Japan and the Japanese? I felt that the Japanese occupation of the USA, described in the novel, would be stern but fair -- unlike the German. A major aspect of the novel was my desire to contrast the two, German and Japanese occupation. Did this contrast get across? I would be very distressed if it turned out that my favorable feelings toward Japan did not come across in the novel, as seen from your standpoint. After all, the basis of the novel was Mr. Tagomi's thwarting of German designs, his deep humanitarian quality whichdefied the German authorities. Of all the fiction I have written, nothing has meant more to me than the scene in which Mr. Tagomi confronts the German authorities and wins out against them, in the name of humanity.

Did the special speech of the Japanese living in the USA West Coast seem convincing to you? Or did I misrepresent the Jpanese manner of speaking English? I would be very upset if, in your opinion, this special speech was not convincing.

Did you yourself personally like the novel?

I am sorry to be putting so many questions to you, but all this is very important to me. I am sorry for causing you any inconvenience, and any and all answers you might give me to the above questions would be quite valuable to me. Thank you very much for your trouble and time, and I will hope to hear from you.

Cordially,  {PKD > Shokichi Kawaguchi (Tokyo), 12-8-68}

{Thanks to Patrick Clark and the PKD Trust. As are all these letters taken from the BGSU Collection excerpted herein, this material is copyright, The Philip K. Dick Trust. All rights reserved... For information contact Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency, Inc., 381 Park Avenue South, ste.1020, New York, NY 10016.}

The Mainstream That Through The Ghetto Flows

(PKD:) I did seven years of research for The Man in the High Castle. Seven years of research: it took me seven years to amass the material on the Nazis and the Japanese. Especially on the Nazis. And that's probably the reason why it's a better novel than most of my novels: I knew what I was talking about. I had prime-source material at the Berkeley-Cal library right from the gestapo's mouth--stuff that had been seized after World War II. Stuff that was marked for the eyes of "the higher police" only. I had to read what those guys wrote in their private journals in order to write THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. That's also why I've never written a sequel to it: it's too horrible, too awful. I started several times to write a sequel, but I had to go back and read about Nazis again, so I couldn't do it. Somebody would have to come in and help me--someone who had the stomach for it, the stamina, to think along those lines, to get into the head of the right character. Now, Richard Condon, who wrote The Manchurian Candidate, also wrote a thing called An Infinity of Mirrors, which is about Reichsfuhrer Himmler, and Condon knew everything there was to know about Himmler. He got into Himmler's head; he had the guts to do that. I don't, and that's why my book, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, is set in the Japanese part. I just have little glimpses of the Nazi part.

{...}

(Interviewer:) What do they think of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in Germany?

(Dick:) They didn't know that I could read German. A publisher bought it in Germany and began to translate it, and when I learned that they'd bought it, I said, "Oh, no, you're not going to put that book out in Germany without letting me see the German translation." I said, "Listen, Scott, we're not going to let them publish that book lest I read the galleys. It's gotta be sine qua non. It's gotta be a condition." Well, they didn't have galleys. They just had the typescript, so they had to send that to us. When I started reading that thing, I could see that they had destroyed the book. They'd turned it into a travesty of itself. I actually burst into tears when I finished reading it. Here was my best novel, right, and they said, "We didn't know you could read German." They actually said that in their letter. They gave me five days to read it, and my German got very fluent. I stayed up night and day with my Cassell's German-English Dictionary and I read every single word, comparing the German line by line with the English. They hadn't changed any of the political parts--all the anti-Nazi stuff was still there. They'd just turned it into a cheap adventure novel. I remember one part where it read: Tagomi stolzierte einher wie Wyatt Earp." Now, I never mentioned Wyatt Earp in my book. "Tagomi swaggered like Wyatt Earp"! "Tagomi swaggered like Vyatt Oorp"!

(Interviewer:) What about Japan?

(Dick:) I can't read Japanese. I can read the English titles of my novels in the bio section in the back. So help me--I don't mean this as a slur against the Japanese--but they listed Valuable Man instead of Variable Man. Somebody suggested I write the translator and ask him specific questions about the book, and he did write back. Now, I thought the Japanese were supposed to be very polite, but I was wrong. First of all, he said, "Your book wasn't any good to start with.'' Secondly, he said, "You've also confused Chinese culture and Japanese culture. The Chinese are inferior people, and the I Ching's Chinese and not Japanese. No Japanese would ever use some Confucian classic. Only foreigners use those." I was quite amazed at how up-front he was in his contempt for the book, but it's still in print in Japan. It's sold very well, and I've made almost thirty-five dollars off of it. Over a ten-year period. One time, I got a check for forty-two cents, and Scott Meredith had taken out two cents. A check for forty-two cents. It was the royalty for a copy that had sold in Tanganyika or some place like that. One copy, and my royalty's forty-two cents. And Scott took out two cents and sent me a check for forty cents. I was so broke, I cashed it. I wrote dirty words on the back of it for a long time, and finally I went up to the Seven Eleven and bought a Manhandler Meat Pie or something.

(Interviewer:) They took a forty-cent check?

(Dick:) Well, they kind of laughed at me, but they always laughed at me at Seven Eleven anyway because mv checks always bounced. At least this check didn't bounce, seeing how it was Scott's check. One time, four guys from the Seven Eleven showed up at the front door with two hundred and eighty-five dollars worth of bad checks that I'd written to the Seven Eleven. They said, "You've got till five o'clock to make them good or you're going to the DA's office." I borrowed it from mv insurance agent. State Farm loaned me the money. That's the life of the writer. I'm laughing now, but I wasn't laughing that day.

{For continuation see: The Mainstream That Through The Ghetto Flows}

SL-38 63:

Dear Tony,

    I called Pete Israel, my editor at Putnam's,after talking to you, and he assured me that they "could have it both ways": market their printing of MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in a mainstream type way as well as a way that would appeal to the s-f reader, especially in terms of my name. Pete said, "Of course, I guess you're not as well-known as Heinlein, are you?" In a rather hopeful tone, as if he were wondering if maybe I was as well-known, and how nice that would be, like Pooh wondering if there was another jar of honey, or had he eaten the last, etc. "Pete," I said, "I may not be as well-known as Heinlein, but Tony Boucher says --" and here, I admit I attributed to you certain favorable statements as to me & my work, which, I could tell, did not fall on deaf ears. As they are now just copy-editing the MS, this is my last time to make any pitch to them ... so forgive me if I used you as a totem god mask of Power and Magic by which to make effective my wish.

    {...}

    {...} I was sick from November all the way through to March. Even the news of my sale to Putnam's failed to affect me (December tenth, it took place) {...} ... I did a rewrite on MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE for Pete Israel... but what lay ahead? On March first, the book became finally accepted by Putnam's legally -- and that was over. Now what?

    {...}{PKD > Tony Boucher, Apr 25, 1962}

OnPKD 87

{Juliana} is the only one who understands the meaning of Abendsen's book (Ch.15) and it shows her there is a way out: "There's nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue": Her understanding is confirmed when she asks the I Ching: What are we supposed to learn from The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? The answer: Inner Truth, the same hexagram as Mr. Tagomi's. And what is the inner truth? That Germany and Japan lost the war, just as Abendsen's book describes. The winner of the war is really the loser. Dick here asks the reader to follow him through a series of reflections in the artifices mirroring reality. In the world of TMITHC, the Nazis really won the war, but in the SF world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (representing inner truth), they really lost it. If the reader moves back a step, he realises that in the real world of human construct, the US and its allies won the war, so the inner truth, contained in Dick's SF, is that they really lost it. An equation is established in which Dick's novel is to the real world what Abendsen's novel is to Dick's fictional reality. The winner of any war is locked into the necessity of continuing to fight to maintain his superior power position. The effort eventually destroys him. On a moral level, he has already been destroyed because of the horrendous acts he committed to win. The winner paradoxically is the loser. The reader's eyes meet Dick's in the hall of mirrors the fiction builds when he understands this meaning. {Patricia S. Warrick "The Encounter of Taoism and Fascism in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE."}

Collector's Notes

Phildickian: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Easton Press, hb, Leather, 1988. VF Full leather with gilt lettering and design, gilt page edges and satin ribbon marker. $175

Phildickian: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, SFBC, hb, 2nd SFBC, 1980c. NF/NF $15

Phildickian: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Gollancz, hb, 1975. Ex-Lib VG/NF $85

Phildickian: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Popular Library, pb, 1968. G+ $10

Phildickian: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Gregg Press, hb, 1979. NF $300

Rudy’s Books: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, G. P. Putnam, 1962  1st Edition (code D36 on page 239) Cover Photo  Dustjacket has price clipped corner and had been glued and taped to cover similar to library copy.  Previous owner's name label is attached to the rear inside cover. The dustjacket has a very nice bright appearance and overall condition is very good as noted above. . . . . . . . . . . .  $350.00 SF {2 months later Rudy has this going for $250.00}

Rudy’s Books: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, G. P. Putnam, SFBC, Code L47 on p217. FINE in dj $25.