The Man in the High Castle

I am a huge fan of alternate history books, and this was the book that started my love affair.

The author’s character and set building in this book was just brilliant. I’m not sure if PKD was the first to create the multiverse genre, but he is one of the greatest to have ever taken his readers on such a wild journey to them. The TV series was fantastic, but the book is a masterpiece.

Now, you may be thinking – hey, that’s an alternate history SF. And you’re right, but in my view, alternate history is a subset of multiverse novels. Dick’s book relies on an interpretation of an idea in quantum physics which answers the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat. (You know, the one where the cat is both alive and dead in the box, until you look at it – and then it’s one or the other?)

The Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) suggests that if the cat is alive in your world, it’s dead in another. There are two worlds because of that… show more.

This alternative history novel is a vision of what could well have been if things had gone slightly differently. The vision presented by the author is haunting because, throughout the book, you cannot free yourself of the thought that this could really have happened. It leaves you thinking about how easily your life could turn into a nightmare and how impotent you are to change the course of history. You finish the book feeling that you just dodged a bullet.