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kerry_handscomb 's review for:
Eye in the Sky
by Philip K. Dick
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.