Eye In The Sky by Philip K. Dick
01/06/2003 . Source: Sue Davies 

Gollancz. 243 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07456-6.

Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK.

check out website(s): www.orionbooks.co.uk

Are you paranoid? Do you imagine that the world has an agenda and it is to destroy you or perhaps your self-confidence?

Don't read this book then because it explores what it is like when the world really is out to get you. At the beginning, Hamilton has been called in to explain why he is being fired. It's not him they are worried about but his wife who appears to be a 'fellow traveller' of the Communist Party.

She has shown an unhealthy interest in the Communist and other workers' parties. The year is 1957 and Hamilton works in a defence installation in the United States.

His record has been closely scrutinised by the security officer, McFeyffe, who has decided reluctantly to inform the boss. Hamilton is incensed and also worried how far his wife Marsha's interest has extended.

He meets her as he leaves the office and despite everything they decide to visit the Bevatron, a new reactor that is open to viewing by the public and McFeyffe tags along. Taken round by a young Negro guide with a mixed group of their fellow Americans there is a horrific accident.

Awaiting rescue, they all fall into unconsciousness except one. They are taken to hospital they seem to make a rapid recovery. However, it seems the world has subtly changed. They find that they are in a world that requires expressions of faith to make even the simplest machinery work.

Hamilton gets a new job but has to pray for the right salary level which falls manna-like from Heaven. He and McFeyffe decide to investigate and are carried into the heavens and past a great staring eye. They are in a world governed by one individual's subconscious and find they must fight their way through all the dominant personalities before they can truly get home.

Each successive world becomes more and more dangerous to he group as paranoia reaches its height until finally they reach Marsha's world where they must struggle against bloated Capitalists and the Party to find out the truth.

Dick once again gets in first with a most paranoid study written at a time of great uncertainty when the clock slowly ticked towards a nuclear war. Fear of the unknown and particularly of Communism was at its height.

It might seem like old hat now that the great USSR is reduced to a smaller role in the world but, at the time it was written, people where building nuclear shelters in their back gardens.

Whatever your feelings about politics or otherwise, it is a riveting read with the individual worlds skilfully created weaving fear and disgust into the tale.

As with his characters in other works, however, they are merely expressions of an aspect of personality he wishes to explore and really go no deeper than that.

Without expecting too much it offers an interesting retrospective and of course a 'fantastic' twist on the McCarthy period of history.

Sue Davies