The Pacific States of America are mentioned only three times in the book (and referenced another 15 times as “PSA”). He could for instance slip across into the Rocky Mountain States. But if he failed successfully to plead there… Plans roamed his mind as he lay in bed gazing up at the ancient light fixture in the ceiling. If he failed to get justification there, he would make his way to one of the Import-Export Trade Missions which operated out of Tokyo, and which had offices throughout California, Oregon, Washington, and the parts of Nevada included in the Pacific States of America. The exact nature of Japanese domination is never discussed, and there is just one reference to the extent of the PSA’s territory: Most of the story is set in the Pacific States of America, a Japanese puppet state on the West Coast. In that universe, everybody already knows what the map looks like, so there is no need to describe it in extenso. ĭick’s parsimony works on another level as well: the obliqueness of his portrait of Axis-occupied America reinforces its realism. Or, to return to the lecture mentioned above: “Latent structure is master of obvious structure”. Like any trompe l’oeuil, that illusion benefits from the fuzziness of detail and is produced in the mind of the observer. Readers picking up those breadcrumbs of information follow the trail of their imagination to an illusion of their own making. Carefully mixing the familiar with the fantastical, Dick paints a convincing picture of the Zeitgeist in occupied America (spoiler alert: it’s dreary).īut another reason the universe of The Man in the High Castle holds up so well is the writer’s parsimonious use of geopolitical detail. “I guess there is a lot of latitude in what you can say when writing about a topic that does not exist”, Dick says in How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later. Can a map -especially a fictional one - be too precise? Dick’s original novel, the references to geography are deliberately, tantalizingly scant. The pilot for The Man in the High Castle opens with a map plotting out that grim alternative to our reality. Separating their domains is a neutral zone spanning the Rocky Mountains. Nazi Germany rules the eastern half of the country, while Japan dominates a puppet state on the West Coast. It’s 1962 in an America that has lost World War II. While maps of the imagined territory dominate the publicity for the television series, and the cover of Dick’s novels, the author himself was scant on specify geographical details - perhaps for a good reason. Dick novel, is a counter-factual historical tale that examines a United States controlled by Axis forces. Amazon’s critically acclaimed series The Man in the High Castle, based on the Philip K.
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