Week 7/8 P.K. Dick

What is the difference in emphasis between the terms science fiction and speculative fiction? Which is The Man in the High Castle?

Speculative fiction and science fiction are interrelated and at times indistinguishable. According to Atwood’s 2010 work, it makes sense to view speculative fiction as an umbrella genre; the mothership from which sci-fi, fantasy, horror and weird fiction and others are beamed. Whether art is imitating life or vice versa, Dick creates works of fiction that fundamentally echo the paranoia and doubt that pervaded his imagination.

 P.K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is undoubtedly a work of speculative fiction. The operative word here is ‘speculative.’ Any work that uses speculation as a narrative device, (outcomes in reality that may have happened, discoveries that were never discovered) is an example of speculative fiction. The Man in the High Castle does just that. Dick’s preoccupation with metaphysics and alternate realities provide a dark and twisting plot in a dystopian parallel universe where Japan won World War Two.

From personal experience, those who constantly speculate are either gossiping or paranoid. By utilising his own doubts in perceived reality, Dick writes with an obsessive style. The suspicion and doubt in the character’s lives provides the I Ching as an effective literary device.  This symbol of synchronicity and Orientalism is produced to link characters dependent on chance together. As a result, the protagonists in The Man in the High Castle magnify the sense of speculation and uncertainty in the novel.