On the surface, The Man in the High Castle is another alternative history. In it, the Axis powers have won the war, and America is fragmented, with the eastern states ruled by Nazi Germany, an autonomous Rocky Mountain State, which acts as a demilitarised buffer zone, and Pacific Seaboard America, governed by the Japanese. An uneasy peace hangs over the world, with Germany undergoing internal political struggles while waging a prolonged cold war against Japan. These events, and their effects on society, are told on a very personal level, through the lives of Frank Frink, a salesman of fake American curios, Juliana, Frank’s estranged wife, Joe Cinadella a Nazi war hero, and Nobuske Tagomi, head of the Japanese Imperial Trade Mission in San Francisco.

Juliana, in particular, is affected by a popular book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by Hawthorn Abendsen, which imagines a world where America and Britain were victorious, and the excesses of the Nazi regime were no longer a threat. The Asian influences on American society are also delicately realised, in particular with the reliance Frank and Juliana and others place in the I Ching, the ancient oriental method of divination (in fact Dick himself consulted the I Ching regularly in writing the book).

In typical Dick fashion, this is more than an alternative history. In writing The Man in the High Castle, which in turn is about Hawthorn Abendsen’s The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Dick has turned a mirror back on itself, creating an infinite regression and questioning the nature of reality and our perception of it. Maybe the world of Castle is a mass-delusion; maybe our own is. Whatever the case, the ‘characters’ are trapped within its confines. But is the ‘real’ world any better, and would we choose to live there if we could? For this reason alone, Castle is a deeply enjoyable and thought-provoking read.