The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick
 Giuseppe Zangara's assassination of U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, led to the weak governments of John Nance Garner (formerly FDR's VP-elect), and later of the Republican John W. Bricker in 1940. Both politicians failed to surmount the Great Depression and maintained the country's isolationist policy against participating in the Second World War; thus, the U.S. had insufficient military capabilities to assist the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or to defend itself against Japan in the Pacific. In 1941, the Nazis conquered the USSR and then exterminated most of its Slavic peoples; the few whom they allowed to live were confined to reservations. In the Pacific, the Japanese destroyed the entire U.S. Navy fleet in a decisive, definitive attack on Pearl Harbor; thereafter, the superior Japanese military conquered Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania during the early forties. Afterward, the Axis Powers, each attacking from opposite fronts, conquered the coastal United States, and, by 1947, the United States and other remaining Allied forces surrendered to the Axis. Japan established the puppet Pacific States of America out of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, parts of Nevada and Washington as part of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The remaining Mountain, Great Plains and Southwestern states became the Rocky Mountain States, a buffer between the PSA and the remaining USA, now a Nazi puppet state in the style of Vichy France. Having defeated the Allies of World War II, the Third Reich and Imperial Japan became the resultant superpowers of their world and consequently embarked upon a Cold War. One of the core narrative elements (Operation Dandelion) is centred on a pre-emptive Nazi nuclear strike on the Japanese Home Islands. The Nazis "have the hydrogen bomb" and the ability to wipe out the Home Islands. Their nuclear energy capabilities also fuel extremely fast air travel and the colonization of the moon, Venus, and Mars. After Adolf Hitler's syphilitic incapacitation, Martin Bormann, as Nazi Party Chancellor, assumes power as Führer of Germany. Bormann proceeds to create a colonial empire to increase Germany's Lebensraum by using technology to drain the Mediterranean Sea and convert it into farmland (see Atlantropa), while sending spaceships to colonize Mars and other parts of the Solar System in the name of the Reich. As the novel begins, Führer Bormann dies, initiating an internal power struggle between Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, and other top Nazis to succeed him as Reichskanzler. The Man in the High Castle contains a loose collection of characters. Some of them know each other, while others are connected in more indirect ways as they all cope with living under totalitarianism. Three characters guide their lives based on the I Ching: *Nobusuke Tagomi is a trade missioner in Japanese San Francisco. To start with, the reader is let in to his world only slightly; this character doesn't intend to be a big part of the story but events unfold in a way that drags him into both central and peripheral conflicts with agendas beyond his control. *Frank Frink works for the Wyndham–Matson Corporation, which specializes in reproductions of pre-war Americana artifacts; he is fired for showing his temper. He is a secret Jew (né Fink) who hides to avoid extermination in a Nazi camp. He is a veteran of the Pacific War. *Juliana Frink, a judo instructor, is Frank's ex-wife. After an initially short introduction her character evolves throughout the rest of the book to her becoming a very central plot piece. She is also used throughout the book by a hired assassin. Others believe different things: *Robert Childan owns American Artistic Handcrafts, an Americana antiques business supplied by Wyndham–Matson Inc. He believes the items genuine; Tagomi is one of his best customers, who buys "gifts" for himself and for visiting businessmen. Given his mostly Japanese clientele, Childan has adopted their manners, Anglicised modes of speech, and ways of thinking, yet, despite his surface deference to the Japanese, he is contemptuous of them, privately retaining his pre-war white supremacy — believing in the essential inferiority of the non-white Asian and African races. Nonetheless, he is very conscious of his image, often deliberating, to himself, in the Asian mentality, how his actions might appear to others. *Wyndham-Matson (Frank Frink's boss) muses about the difference between a real antique and a reproduction antique; via his mistress, he introduces the novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy to the plot and is the plot device used to show the initial difference of opinions in the novel, the differing opinions being those that believe The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is merely a work of good fiction, and those that believe it shows something more (a theme that reaches its climax at the end of the novel). *Mr. Baynes, a wealthy Swedish industrialist, is actually Rudolf Wegener, a Captain in Reich Naval Counter-Intelligence, who is en route to meet Tagomi, through whom he expects to meet an important Japanese representative. He is taken aback by Tagomi's gift of a "genuine Mickey Mouse watch" (bought at the American Artistic Handicrafts Inc. shop). The narrative storylines of the plot alternate among those of the characters, providing a broad picture of quotidian life in totalitarian America: *Baynes travels undercover to San Francisco, as a Swedish merchant. There, he talks with Tagomi, but, in pursuit of his true mission, must prolong their meeting until the arrival, from Japan, of Mr. Yatabe (General Tedeki, formerly of the Imperial General Staff). His mission is to warn the Japanese of Operation Löwenzahn (Operation Dandelion), a nuclear attack upon the Japanese Archipelago Home Islands planned by Joseph Goebbels's faction within the ruling Nazi Party and opposed by Heydrich's faction. *Frank Frink and his friend Ed McCarthy start a jewelry business; their beautiful, original art works strangely affect the Americans and Japanese who see them. He is arrested after his attempted sabotage of Wyndham-Matson — by telling Childan that the items of Americana he sells are fake. *Tagomi, unable to acknowledge the unpleasant rumors he has heard, finds solace in action, fighting the Nazi agents attempting to kill Baynes; he uses the "authentic" Colt U.S. Army revolver bought from Childan. Then, he retaliates against local Nazi authority, by directing the release of the Jew Frank Frink, who was bound for deportation to Nazi America. Tagomi and Frink never meet, nor does he know that Frank Frink created the beautiful artwork that so impressed him; however, as a devout Buddhist, the existential implications of deliberately taking a human life so bother him they provoke a heart attack. *Juliana, living in Colorado, begins a sexual relationship with Joe Cinnadella, a truck driver claiming to be an Italian war veteran. He wants to meet Hawthorne Abendsen (the eponymous Man in the High Castle, so called, because he allegedly lives in a guarded residence), who wrote the novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Juliana travels with him, but discovers that he is actually a Swiss assassin meaning to kill the writer; she attempts to leave, but he bars her way. Distressed beyond reason, Juliana cuts Joe's throat with the straight razor which she had considered using to commit suicide. She completes the journey alone, meets author Abendsen, and induces him to reveal the truth about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. *Robert Childan desperately attempts to retain his honor despite the forced obsequiousness towards the Japanese overlords. Although ambivalent about the lost war and foreign occupiers of his country, whom he loathes and respects, he discovers a sense of cultural pride in himself. He also investigates the widespread forgery in the antiques market amid increased Japanese interest in genuine Americana.