The Man in the High Castle (1962) would seem to stand apart from the rest of Dick's science fiction. In regard to its literary construction, it is only barely foreseeable from Eye in the Sky (and from that alone, I would say, among PKD's previous published fictions);1 nor, from the retrospect of his subsequent books, does it appear to be inevitable that he would have managed to construct any such work. He said that he labored over it for a solid year, and that may not include research time. The result is indisputably the most artful (though not the most art-full) book he ever wrote. The fact that High Castle has been the subject of more attempts at close reading than any other PKD title – and possibly more than all the rest combined – tacitly supports that judgment, and suggests as well that High Castle is not only the science-fiction book of his most amenable to such treatment, but also the one most appealing to readers who aren't sciencefiction addicts (let alone AdDicks). For precisely the same reason, the enthusiasm that High Castle originally met with – it was the only Dick title to win a Hugo Award – has worn exceedingly thin among fans of PKD's later fiction. Characterologically and ‘thematically,’ it is representable as being typical of Dickian science-fiction, and all the more so in view of those points at which an alternate ‘reality’ irrupts into the world- construct on which the fiction mainly focuses.