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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SF NOVELS OPUS FIVE,
By Daniel S. "Daniel" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: EYE IN THE SKY (Collier Nucleus Science Fiction Classic) (Paperback)
The 1957 EYE IN THE SKY is one of the first Philip K. Dick's books you should read if you still don't know this american writer. If I'm not mistaken, it was the first time that Philip K. Dick, in a novel, was treating the theme of the virtual realities. Eight persons, while visiting the Bevatron, the only pure science-fiction element of the novel, are trapped in a time hole after having accidentally been hit by the Bevatron ray. They wake up in a world that at first is pretty much the same than the one they have just left but they soon realize that they are caught in a world entirely created by the phantasms of one of them. One can like THE EYE OF THE SKY for numerous good reasons such, for instance, as the slight favour of Agatha Christie's " and then they were none " in it, the reader waiting anxiously for the next imaginary world to appear and the clues that will lead him to the identity of the new dreamer's name. One can also appreciate this book for its critique of the late fifties's american society : The Mc Carthy syndrome, the anti-communism paranoïa or the wave of the evangelism don't have the slightest chance under Philip K. Dick's cruel pen. With this book, PKD revealed himself as the first class writer he will be during the sixties. A book for a future PKD fan.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Subtext within perception within inference within subtext,
By
This review is from: Eye in the Sky: A Novel (Paperback)
What more could you expect from Philip K. Dick? Even the title "Eye in the Sky" holds different meanings depending upon how you look at it. In this story where religion and reality mutate from one person's mind to the next, we are confronted with the question of what is real. Is the world around us just in our minds? or is it in someone else's mind? A God-fearing zealot? A paranoiac?
And, of course, religion comes into it, as the question of God vs. Ego rises all the way to the top. All the way to the title, in fact. "Eye in the Sky", as a title, is visualized in the book when two characters ascend (Marry Poppins-like, on an umbrella) to heaven to find themselves floating before a giant eye. That alone, to me, opens up a barrel full of questions about how our desire to look into the sky and find God shapes what we see. But then, being Philip K. Dick, the twist goes further, and we then discover that the eye is not in the protagonists' mind, but in someone else's... There isn't enough room to ask (or attempt to answer) all the questions that book will raise, which is why it is an absolute marvel of fiction. One thing that I like about Dick in general is that his books are shorter than most that fall into the genre of science fiction. They are easy to read, are finished quickly, but they raise questions that will leave you thinking long after you've put the book down. In "Eye in the Sky" my original criticism was that the end came a bit abruptly and was non-conclusive. But then I figured it out, and now I cant stop thinking about how clever and appropriate the conclusion of the story really is.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE WORLD INSIDE YOUR HEAD,
This review is from: Eye in the Sky: A Novel (Paperback)
It starts innocently enough: A group of tourists are marveling at the invention of a machine called the Bevatron. Suddenly the machine goes haywire (for you gamers out there, imagine the first scene of Half-Life), destroys the walkway high above the machine (where the tourists are) and gravity does the rest.
The next part is weird, which in any PKD book world be normal, I guess. The tourists, having been zapped by the Bevatron are now stuck in a fantasy world that is being generated by one of the members of the tour group--they have no idea who. In that regard there is a slight mystery element to this novel. In each world the tourists are now tourists yet again, although this time they are tourists within the worlds that someone else has created. One lady is extremely paranoid in real life, resulting in her fantasy world where everything is out to get you (the house scene is wonderful!). Then there is another lady that abhorrs everything bad in real life. In her fantasy world there are no ants, there are no speed bumps. If it annoys or bothers her she won't allow it to exist. It was an eye-opener reading about how others view the world and what the world would be like if they could have their way. It makes me glad that I live in a world where I can walk into my house and not be afraid of it trying to literally eat me.
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