Science Fiction

TMITHC is mostly set in a California where Japan has won WWII, scenes range from Japan to Colorado. The use of the I Ching in prominent.

GYT is not science fiction (but definitely Dickian) is set in China. This book may be hard to find.

Both are good reads but I consider neither top tier Dick novels.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962) is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963[1][2] and has since been translated into many languages.

The story of The Man in the High Castle, about daily life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism, occurs in 1962, fourteen years after the end of a longer Second World War (1939–1948 in this history). The victorious Axis Powers — Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany — are conducting intrigues against each other in North America, specifically in the former U.S., which surrendered to them once they had conquered Eurasia and destroyed the populaces of Africa.[3]

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Dick used the philosophic I Ching (Book of Changes) to determine the plot particulars of The Man in the High Castle, explaining:

"I started with nothing but the name, Mister Tagomi, written on a scrap of paper, no other notes. I had been reading a lot of Oriental philosophy, reading a lot of Zen Buddhism, reading the I Ching. That was the Marin County zeitgeist, at that point; Zen Buddhism and the I Ching. I just started right out and kept on trucking."[4] In the event, he blamed the I Ching for plot incidents he disliked: "When it came to close down the novel, the I Ching had no more to say. So, there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending".[5]

The I Ching is prominent in The Man in the High Castle; having diffused it as part of their cultural hegemony overlordship of the Pacific Coast U.S., the Japanese — and some American — characters consult it, and then act per its replies to their queries. Specifically, "The Man in the High Castle", Hawthorne Abendsen, himself, used it to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and, at story's end, in his presence, Juliana Frink, queries the I Ching: "Why did it write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?" and "What is the reader to learn from the novel?" The I Ching replies with Hexagram 61 ([中孚] zhōng fú) Chung Fu, "Inner Truth", describing the true state of the world—every character in The Man in the High Castle is living a false reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gather_Yourselves_Together

After the final victory of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists in 1949, an American company prepares to abandon their Chinese operations, leaving three people behind to oversee transitional affairs- Carl Fitter, Vernon Tildon and Barbara Mahler. Vernon and Barbara were previously involved with one another back in the United States, in 1945, when she lost her virginity to him. They have sex again, but Barbara has matured, and becomes more interested in Carl, who is younger than she is. Carl is more interested in reading his handwritten volume of personal philosophy to her, but Barbara does succeed in seducing him, shortly before the arrival of the Chinese.

Aspects of Gather Yourselves Together

Despite being an early, non-science fiction work, the book prefigures several staples of Dick's writing.

Carl keeps a notebook much like Phil's own 1970s Exegesis
A "dead-cat-as-indictment-for-being" story that is very similar to the one later used in VALIS.
The first "Dark Haired Girl" in any of Dick's novels appears in one of Carl's flashbacks.
"Teddy", one of Verne's past conquests, is likely a version of Phil's own imaginary sister of the same name.
The conclusion of the novel draws tenuous parallels between America and the late Roman Empire, and between the early Christians and communist Chinese.