Toner_Low

THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY

Last week I came up from the subway near my apartment still carrying the copy of The Man in the High Castle which I had been reading on the train and went to pick up some Chinese takeout (the wife was at her painting class). About The Man in the High Castle--I'd been wanting to read this book at least since I was in high school; I read some short stories by Philip K. Dick, though, and I guess they didn't grab me because I kept putting High Castle off. Well, as many of you know, it's a total masterpiece.
So I'm in line behind some other guy at Red Hot Szechuan, and this guy steps aside to let me give the hostess my order. When I'm done, the guy says to me, "I know someone who would appreciate this coincidence." He holds up the book HE was carrying when he walked into the joint, and it's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. We talk a little bit while we're waiting for our food; he recommends Ubik, and I point out that it's not really a coincidence at all that we both walked into a restaurant with our Dicks hanging out (come on, you knew the pun was coming). After all, I point out that in recent weeks I'd read a comic making numerous references to Dick, seen that yet another story of his had been turned into a movie, and discovered a Web site where you can find out which phildickian reality you're living in today. He's inescapable, because the world is slowly realizing how utterly prescient he was, perhaps moreso at present than any other writer.
The strange thing about The Man in the High Castle is that it's not really science fiction; the action takes place in an alternate reality where the Axis powers won WWII, but the focus of the book is on the I Ching and the idea that a book called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," telling of a reality where the Allies won and England went on to conquer Europe, may be a more valid reality; by consulting the I Ching, the characters slowly realize that everything they understand to be real may be a grand fiction. Borges, eat your heart out.