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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
I was super disappointed that this was the novel version of that one Shia LaBouf movie.
So I haven't read Philip K. Dick in, oh, twenty-something years but I think it's safe to say this isn't his best. The first section really reminded me of Ted Chiang's story about the Tower of Babel, but Dick came off the worse for the comparison. (Chiang is, for the record and the curious, a frickin' genius.) The satire in this book seems pretty obvious, but it never reaches for humor that might land it on the shelf with Heller or Vonnegut. Honestly, if it wasn't free on Kindle Unlimited with free audio book included as a bonus, then I probably wouldn't have finished it. On the upside, though, this was my first time trying an audiobook (when I was walking the dog and such) and I was pleasantly surprised. So there is that...
(Just kidding about that first part. I know the Shia LeBeuff movie is called Eagle Eye. What kind of fan do you think I am?)
So I haven't read Philip K. Dick in, oh, twenty-something years but I think it's safe to say this isn't his best. The first section really reminded me of Ted Chiang's story about the Tower of Babel, but Dick came off the worse for the comparison. (Chiang is, for the record and the curious, a frickin' genius.) The satire in this book seems pretty obvious, but it never reaches for humor that might land it on the shelf with Heller or Vonnegut. Honestly, if it wasn't free on Kindle Unlimited with free audio book included as a bonus, then I probably wouldn't have finished it. On the upside, though, this was my first time trying an audiobook (when I was walking the dog and such) and I was pleasantly surprised. So there is that...
(Just kidding about that first part. I know the Shia LeBeuff movie is called Eagle Eye. What kind of fan do you think I am?)
“Anti-cat is one jump away from anti-Semitism.”
― Philip K. Dick, Eye in the Sky
For liberal, open-minded men and women, dealing with religious fundamentalists can be most unpleasant. From my own experience, I recall several nasty cases: a Sunday school teacher giving us kids a pep talk on the virtues of racism and segregation; accompanying a college buddy to his church and listening to the minister browbeat the congregation with threats of hellfire; having to deal with aggressive bible thumpers at my front door; a loudmouth bully manager using the Bible as a billy club to manipulate subordinates.
Looking back on my boyhood, I got off easy. There are many young boys and girls who have been emotionally traumatized and even physically abused and beaten in the name of fundamentalist-style religion.
Although PKD had a liberally inclined upbringing (his mother sent young Philip to a Quaker school), I’m quite certain he had his own brushings with fundamentals in one form or another. Anyway, unlike a book attempting to counter narrow-mindedness with well-reasoned, heartfelt advice on tolerance, compassion, awareness or presence, written by, say, the Dali Lama or Eckhart Tolle, PKD’s Eye in the Sky is a searing, no-nonsense, tell it like it is novel addressing fundamentalist religion with all its rigidity, brutality, suffocation and kitschy ugliness.
Indeed, one of the most entertaining, inventive works of science fiction you will ever read. Did Christopher Hitchens read Eye in the Sky? If so, undoubtedly many a time Hitch chuckled and nodded his head in approval.
But the novel’s pointed black as midnight humor and blistering satire has a wider target than religion; after fundamentalism, PDK shifts his focus to a frumpy woman who holds an antiquated vision of life that is saccharine, shallow and out-and-out dishonest. Then, more swings and moves!
And, when each character’s distorted, cartoonish view of life becomes the reality of the external world, the story clicks from one universe to another, and with each click, PDK vividly portrays how intolerance and mean-spiritedness of any stripe or flavor is a nightmarish reality.
Thus, on one level, Eye in the Sky can be read as a philosophical meditation on how human perception shrinks the world into its own stultifying vision. And, on another level, the implications of solipsism, that is, a view of the world having no extension or externality; rather, the entire universe living in the head of the solipsist. All in all, a book that’s vintage PKD, a book that, in my modest view of the universe, should be required high school reading.
Eye in the Sky, first published in 1957, is Philip K. Dick's fifth novel. It's a larger and more sophisticated work than his first few novels. When I first read the PKD novels back in the early 1980's, Eye in the Sky was one of my least favorites; I appreciate it much more now.
An accident happens in the Bevatron, a scientific facility, and eight people are injured and exposed to some kind of radiation. These people first become conscious in kind of fundamentalist religious world, in which heaven and hell are real places above and below what is presumably a flat earth. Angels are thuggish enforcers of God's will, and everything needful for life must be obtained by prayer. We find out that this is the private world of one of the injured people, which turns out to be very unpleasant for everyone else.
After escaping from this personal fantasy, the group ends up in the world of another of their number. She is a very prim and proper lady who had the power to abolish anything she finds unpleasant or distateful. Everyone must be careful about what they say and do to avoid being abolished. Thirdly, the group finds itself in a terrible paranoid fantasy; and lastly, they wake up in the middle of a communist revolution taking place in America. These are strange personal worlds inhabited by members of the group.
A person's private universe, PKD is saying, where their deepest thoughts, beliefs, and fears are real, would be a nightmare not only for others, but ultimately also for themselves. This is a clever observation by PKD and makes a typical PKD novel in which he plays with the nature of reality.
Finally, the group appears to wake up in the real world. But is it the real world? At the start of the book one of the group, Hamilton, is effectively fired from his job because of suspicions that his wife is a communist. The novel was written in the McCarthyist period in America, when this kind of thing really happened—someone else's nightmarish personal fantasy? At the end of the book, Hamilton joins with another of the group to start a business making musical equipment. Everything now is remarkably positive and upbeat—perhaps too much so. Are we lastly in Hamilton's private world, though one that has the quality of a pleasant dream rather than a nightmare?
The book consists of the four subplots inside the frame consisting of Hamilton's career issues, and the frame provides the overall narrative arc of the story. However, PKD is playing with us. Where does the dream stop and reality begin? Eye in the Sky is a clever and thought-provoking novel.
An accident happens in the Bevatron, a scientific facility, and eight people are injured and exposed to some kind of radiation. These people first become conscious in kind of fundamentalist religious world, in which heaven and hell are real places above and below what is presumably a flat earth. Angels are thuggish enforcers of God's will, and everything needful for life must be obtained by prayer. We find out that this is the private world of one of the injured people, which turns out to be very unpleasant for everyone else.
After escaping from this personal fantasy, the group ends up in the world of another of their number. She is a very prim and proper lady who had the power to abolish anything she finds unpleasant or distateful. Everyone must be careful about what they say and do to avoid being abolished. Thirdly, the group finds itself in a terrible paranoid fantasy; and lastly, they wake up in the middle of a communist revolution taking place in America. These are strange personal worlds inhabited by members of the group.
A person's private universe, PKD is saying, where their deepest thoughts, beliefs, and fears are real, would be a nightmare not only for others, but ultimately also for themselves. This is a clever observation by PKD and makes a typical PKD novel in which he plays with the nature of reality.
Finally, the group appears to wake up in the real world. But is it the real world? At the start of the book one of the group, Hamilton, is effectively fired from his job because of suspicions that his wife is a communist. The novel was written in the McCarthyist period in America, when this kind of thing really happened—someone else's nightmarish personal fantasy? At the end of the book, Hamilton joins with another of the group to start a business making musical equipment. Everything now is remarkably positive and upbeat—perhaps too much so. Are we lastly in Hamilton's private world, though one that has the quality of a pleasant dream rather than a nightmare?
The book consists of the four subplots inside the frame consisting of Hamilton's career issues, and the frame provides the overall narrative arc of the story. However, PKD is playing with us. Where does the dream stop and reality begin? Eye in the Sky is a clever and thought-provoking novel.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Enjoyable story, funny and dark, with a good deal to think about. Easy to read and quick, also firmly dated by its era.
Such a cool story. After a really long time, I've read a totally engrossing fiction novel that had such a novel story line.
This one of the earliest books from PKD is one of my favorites. I tend to love books when I can hardly imagine what the hell is going on :) therefore this and Ubik are just brilliant! and be careful with the spoilers everywhere, even in half-sentence introductions - they ruin this book!
Had our protagonist been younger, we could call it a coming of age novel. As it stands, we had better call it a coming to his senses novel. It was written in 1957 and the misogyny and race issues are not up to date. There is satire, there is humor, there are moral dilemmas and philosophy. Aside from what the particle accelerator does, there is very little Science Fiction.