--- title: Philip K. Dick Disses Herman Wouk in 1955 Letter to TIME description: The 'Man in the High Castle' author really, really didn't like 'The Caine Mutiny' canonical: https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-03T14:30:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:05:59.142Z article:section: History og:title: Philip K. Dick Disses Herman Wouk in 1955 Letter to TIME og:description: The 'Man in the High Castle' author really, really didn't like 'The Caine Mutiny' og:url: https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Philip K. Dick Disses Herman Wouk in 1955 Letter to TIME twitter:description: The 'Man in the High Castle' author really, really didn't like 'The Caine Mutiny' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Philip K. Dick Knew How to Throw Shade  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 3, 2015 2:30 PM UTC  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Feb 3, 2015 2:30 PM UTC The writer Philip K. Dick has returned to the public eye recently, as the pilot for [a show based on his ](http://time.com/3684409/man-in-the-high-castle-amazon-pilot-nazis/)[_The Man in the High Castle_](http://time.com/3684409/man-in-the-high-castle-amazon-pilot-nazis/)— an alternate history in which the Axis triumphed in World War II — is streaming on Amazon. When the _Minority Report_ author and longtime Berkeley resident first made the pages of TIME Magazine, it was for a very different reason. In the fall of 1955, the magazine had put the writer Herman Wouk (of the mega-bestseller _The Caine Mutiny_) on the cover. As the story inside noted, _Caine_ had won the author a Pulitzer Prize, extreme wealth and media attention, particularly to the surprisingly conservative take-aways of the story. “His chief significance is that he spearheads a mutiny against the literary stereotypes of rebellion—against three decades of U.S. fiction dominated by skeptical criticism, sexual emancipation, social protest and psychoanalytic sermonizing,” the story continued. But not everyone was a fan. This letter to the editor appeared in the magazine as few weeks later:  From the Oct. 3, 1955, issue of TIME Dick did not appear in TIME again until his death in 1982, mere months before _Blade Runner_ would propel his work into the mainstream, a trend that has continued for decades as his visions of tech-inflected dystopia grew more and more relevant. As Richard Corliss noted of Dick in 2002, “[his dark vision of the future is now](http://time.com/vault/issue/2002-06-24/page/69/).” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/"},"headline":"Philip K. Dick Knew How to Throw Shade","datePublished":"2015-02-03T14:30:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:05:59.142Z","description":"The 'Man in the High Castle' author really, really didn't like 'The Caine Mutiny'","url":"https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3686119/philip-k-dick-letter/","name":"Philip K. Dick Knew How to Throw Shade"}}]}] ```