I believe The Man in the High Castle to be a work of speculative fiction, with the story based in an alternative reality, one which is not based, like science fiction, hundreds of years in the future. The way this story is constructed is also strikingly different to other forms of fiction in that, the way it is written is more like a historical account, written by someone who was there, someone with great knowledge of the goings on. This more than anything differentiates Dick's form of speculative fiction in tMitHC from other forms of science fiction.
The speculation and imagination of what may occur in the future is what makes science fiction such a special genre, even the name though suggests that it is fiction based on the world of science which I choose to believe means technological advances and the further development of the human race as far as robots and intelligent machines goes. The Man in the High Castle on the other hand is more speculative, a more 'what would have happened' story while continuing to have malignant undertones suggesting something abnormal or other than the apparent reality is occurring.
Brown (2001) I believes thinks that the underlying themes of tMitHC are ones of interconnectedness, the little people who have the greatest effect, even on things they do not fully understand, and although the story remains unresolved, the philosophical influences of leaving the future unclear reflects our own reality. We can imagine what is going to occur, we may even believe that we know what the future holds. Dick states "the universe is only apparently real, an illusion behind which the truth might dwell". This ideal is quite clearly reflected by the way this story is concluded, with such uncertainty and open ends, can we be sure that the supposed reality within the novel is even a reality?
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