Most alternative history books bet their success on their high-concept origins: what if the Confederacy won the American Civil War? What if Lovecraftian technology supercharged the Cold War? And what if World War II turned out differently?

It's that last possibility that's enraptured the most writers, if only because it seems so creatively fertile. The fulcrum is narrow and well-studied enough that it's simple to posit an alternative history where Hitler didn't invade Russia, or where the US didn't enter the European theater. Or you can go the route of wish-fulfillment, inventing time-travelers who kill Hitler (or just a bunch of singularly-vulgar American commandoes). And if the Nazis win, you get to play around with their aesthetics and ideology, while using them as essentially the ultimate bad guys.

And those approaches I listed aren't always so bad! WOLFENSTEIN: THE NEW ORDER is one recent example of an alt-history who meaningfully and respectfully plays around with the concept while still trafficking in AAA video game ultra-violence. (And I mean, shockingly successful. I'm still midway through but damn that game is impressive for finding subtlety in the midst of shooting robo-nazis with lasers. Seriously.)

But THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE takes a wholly different approach: focusing on the interior consequences of a Nazi victory, with an ambivalent relationship to the high-concept toys it has to play with. One of the biggest storylines is of a factory worker who tries to start a new business after he gets mad at his boss! Another is of a shopkeeper who has mixed results at making friends with clients! And most interestingly, you have a mid-level functionary who tries to broker a meeting between two parties while still finding his own way to stay morally upright.

While there are moments where characters acknowledge how wrong the whole scenario seems to be—including the most disappointing subplot of the entire novel—there's very little of the moralizing you usually see throughout this work. There's no drive to make things right, to undo what's been done and get us back to something approximating our current scenario. And most appealingly, it doesn't use the scenario in a Red Dawn sort of way to enjoyably graft an underdog status onto the Americans. The Nazi and Japanese subjugation in HIGH CASTLE is colonialist in the most demeaning and non wish-fulfillment sense.

Dick's most interesting proposition in the book, one that he kinda walks back on in the disappointing final scene, is that history is ultimately agnostic to any result. The Axis victory of HIGH CASTLE isn't any more "true" than our history, outside from the brute fact that it didn't happen and ours did. Dick even creates an in-universe alternate-history tale that posits an Allied victory—and the joke is that it's probably even more realistic than our own history! (No four terms for Roosevelt or a dramatic death right before war's end, among other changes.)

Are there misfires? Sure, there are entire subplots that I could have jettisoned. But the memorable parts are damn memorable, especially the saga of Mr. Tagomi, the aforementioned Japanese mid-level functionary trying to broker the meeting. The way he processes and copes with violence and the world is fascinating enough even without the high-concept trappings. And when Dick finally does let him tap against that fourth wall, the moment is truly transcendent fiction. It's the same kick I get from Moore & Campbell's FROM HELL: a fictional high so great that I'll gladly excuse everything else.