t's 1962, 15 years after America capitulated during World War II, and the strain of living under the rule of another
culture is a daily fact of life in Japanese-administered California. Even a
successful businessman like Robert Childan, a dealer in trendy American
artifacts, worries about a misplaced word that will offend his
slight-conscious customers. Like many others, Army veteran Frank Frink
consults the I Ching, the ancient Oriental oracle, thankful he's not back in
the German-controlled East where his fellow Jews are still enslaved.
And trade attache Nobusuke Tagomi chafes over an upcoming secret meeting that could help Japan regain its technological edge.
Meanwhile, a bizarre book making the rounds explores what could have happened if the
Allies had won the war. A furious German interdict only incites sales in
the West, where the Japanese are merely bemused. Some, like Frank's
estranged wife Juliana, become obsessed with the book; she sets off across the
Rockies with the apparently like-minded Joe, intent on seeing the author,
Hawthorne Abendsen, in his high castle.
The sudden death of Fuhrer Bormann seems to spill disruption across America.
Tagomi's meeting turns out to be an initiative by disaffected Germans to gain
Japan's help against the Reich's increasing cruelty. But various changes in their plans have led to detection by the German consul. Tagomi, his tradition-bound
sensibilities derailed by Nazi inhumanity, finds himself under seige in his
own office. Frink is discovered and faces extradition back to German
territory. Childan gets his commercial break, but the price tag is a subtle
yet total humiliation. And Joe turns out to be a German agent, sent to
assassinate Abendsen. Juliana must deal with him and hurry ahead to warn the
author, drawn more and more by a force she doesn't understand.
When worlds collide
"What if the winners had lost?" is a classic SF scenario. The pre-existing
drama is built into such stories because the suspense from a wild ride through the looking-glass is almost automatic. A writer approaching World War II with this objective, however, meets a serious obstacle: cold, calculated Nazi barbarity. The what-if scenario is in mortal danger if the alternate future is repellent and inhuman.
Philip K. Dick's ingenious solution was to skip Germany and start with Japan,
exploring how chagrined Americans might cope with such complicated
overlords. In this material there is a rich lode, rife with possibilities for psychological and societal study. Two of this short work's memorable characters, Tagomi and Childan, experience soul-shaking crises that bear directly on the
interplay of powerfully different cultures. Far from learning the
brotherhood of man, they emerge awed and disturbed by the chasms carved between
humans during centuries of self-sustaining traditions--Europeans,
Americans, and Orientals alike.
By starting with the Japanese, the story is helped rather than hindered by
the eventual appearance of the Nazis. At first Nazi savagery makes the Japanese
conquerors seem sympathetic. Later, however, it becomes clear that behind
the studied urbanity of these characters lies a more insidious threat to the
scattered remains of American pride.
Finally, the emphasis on the I Ching turns the book into something of a blank
slate. The oracle's workings--the distribution of stalks into patterns
interpreted exhaustively in The Book of Changes--can be seen as
chance, unconscious manipulation, the passive workings of metaphysical
forces, or the active intervention of the divine. Consequently, readers
are free to absorb the story into a variety of contexts, based on mood or
disposition--a remarkably Zen result for a science fiction novel.
