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- Title
The I Ching and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.
- Authors
Mountfort, Paul
- Abstract
This article addresses a gap in current Dickian criticism by undertaking a close reading of the twelve I Ching readings that interlace and undergird Philip K. Dick's celebrated breakthrough novel, The Man in the High Castle (1962). I argue that the I Ching is the device that (literally and figuratively) unifies the stylistic and philosophic dimensions of the novel. Following a summary of key critical approaches, I discuss the particularities of the I Ching as an oracle, followed by close readings of the novel's unique patterning based on its twelve core oracle consultations. This is postscripted by a discussion of the multiple implications for our understanding of High Castle. What is revealed are both the seams of physical construction of the novel and a set of synchronistic complementarities, alternating pairings, and other simultaneities that distinguish Dick's treatment of the uchronie genre from the classical diachronic and even Fredric Jameson's synchronic or Paul Alkon's "postmodern alternate history." I conclude that despite critical ambivalence, including Dick's own, over its ambiguous ending, it is precisely this open-endedness, from which a multiverse of potential interpretations flow, that sustains the novel as an important one in modern literature.
- Subjects
I Ching (Book); DICK, Philip K., 1928-1982; MAN in the High Castle, The (Book : Dick); SCIENCE fiction; LITERARY form; MODERN literature
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2016, Vol 43, Issue 2, p287
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5621/sciefictstud.43.2.0287