PKD explains MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE… sort of

Philip K Dick explain Man in the High Castle among other things…

I enjoyed thinking along these lines for several years. God is as near at hand as the trash in the gutter — God is the trash in the gutter, to speak more precisely. But then one day a wicked thought entered my mind — wicked because it undermined my marvelous pantheistic monism of which I was so proud. What if — and here you will see how at least this particular SF writer gets his plots — what if there exists a plurality of universes arranged along a sort of lateral axis, which is to say at right angles to the flow of linear time? I must admit that upon thinking this I found I had conjured up a terrific absurdity: ten thousand bodies of God arranged like so many suits hanging in some enormous closet, with God either wearing them all at once or going selectively back and forth among them, saying to himself, “I think today I’ll wear the one in which Germany and Japan won World War II” and then adding, half to himself, “And tomorrow I’ll wear that nice one in which Napoleon defeated the British; that’s one of my best.”

AND

In The Man in the High Castle I give no real explanation as to why or how Mr. Tagomi slid across into our universe; he simply sat in the park and scrutinized a piece of modern abstract handmade jewelry — sat and studied it on and on — and when he looked up, he was in another universe. I didn’t explain how or why this happened because I don’t know, and I would defy anyone, writer, reader, or critic, to give a so-called “explanation.” There cannot be one because, of course, as we all know, such a concept is merely a fictional premise; none of us, in our right minds, entertains for even an instant the notion that such alternate universes exist in any actual sense.

A few weeks ago, my online pal, Squub or i or etc., finished reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, at my recommendation. Squub had some questions about it, which I attempted to answer, but when I stumbled across this essay, I thought I’d post it.