Signed
Eye in the Sky
Signed Ace paperback original, 1957
Eye in the Sky (1957) is a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick in which eight people caught in a particle accelerator accident find themselves cycling through a series of alternate realities, each one a projection of one survivor's subconscious ideology. First edition, Ace paperback original.
Signed copy. Signed by Dick on the title page. Part of a group of titles that PKD signed for a collector at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, in one of his rare convention appearances.
Softcover. First Edition, Paperback Original. Ace D-211 ($0.35). Cover art by Valigursky. New York: Ace, 1957. Levack 15a. Wintz & Hyde SF9.1. #10871.
Some rubbing and light wear along spine and edges, else near fine.
Signed copy. Signed by Dick on the title page. Part of a group of titles that PKD signed for a collector at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, in one of his rare convention appearances.
Softcover. First Edition, Paperback Original. Ace D-211 ($0.35). Cover art by Valigursky. New York: Ace, 1957. Levack 15a. Wintz & Hyde SF9.1. #10871.
Some rubbing and light wear along spine and edges, else near fine.
Additional Details
Eye in the Sky (1957) is set in 1959 at the Belmont Bevatron, a particle accelerator near San Francisco. When the proton beam deflector fails, eight people on an observation platform plunge sixty feet through six billion volts of radiation and land in a heap on the chamber floor. All eight survive, but something has gone wrong with reality. Jack Hamilton, a guided missile engineer who has just been fired because his wife Marsha is suspected of Communist sympathies, finds himself leading the group through a sequence of alternate worlds, each one generated from the subconscious of one of the eight survivors.
The first world belongs to Arthur Silvester, an elderly veteran with a fervent belief in a theocratic religion called the Second Bab, in which the one true God speaks through the Prophet Horace Clamp. In Silvester's world, the theology of the Second Bab is simply, literally true. Prayers are answered and transgressions are punished, and a single blasphemous thought can lead to divine retribution. The tone is darkly comic, but the threat is real. A universe governed by the sincere beliefs of one credulous old man is not a safe place for anyone who doesn't share those beliefs.
Subsequent worlds belong to other members of the group, each one a different kind of totalitarianism rooted in a recognizable American anxiety. One world is shaped by an extreme prudishness in which the physical body and its needs are treated as shameful, furniture draped, mirrors covered, any acknowledgment of bodily existence suppressed as obscene. Another reflects the anti-Communist paranoia that cost Hamilton his job in the novel's opening pages, a world of surveillance, loyalty hearings, and purges that barely exaggerates the McCarthy era Dick was writing in. The last world, controlled by a character whose ideological beliefs lean in the other direction, has eliminated everything desirable in the name of a utopian collectivism.
Each world is a projection of someone's internal beliefs, coherent from the inside but stifling when imposed on everyone else. The novel does not single out any one ideology as uniquely dangerous. The theocrat, the puritan, the anti-Communist, and the collectivist all produce the same result when their subconscious is given the power to shape reality, a world in which everyone else must survive inside someone else's certainty.
Eye in the Sky was Dick's first standalone publication for Ace Books, not issued as half of an Ace Double. Originally published in 1957, it is among his earliest novels and one of the clearest anticipations of the false reality theme that would run through the rest of his career.
The first world belongs to Arthur Silvester, an elderly veteran with a fervent belief in a theocratic religion called the Second Bab, in which the one true God speaks through the Prophet Horace Clamp. In Silvester's world, the theology of the Second Bab is simply, literally true. Prayers are answered and transgressions are punished, and a single blasphemous thought can lead to divine retribution. The tone is darkly comic, but the threat is real. A universe governed by the sincere beliefs of one credulous old man is not a safe place for anyone who doesn't share those beliefs.
Subsequent worlds belong to other members of the group, each one a different kind of totalitarianism rooted in a recognizable American anxiety. One world is shaped by an extreme prudishness in which the physical body and its needs are treated as shameful, furniture draped, mirrors covered, any acknowledgment of bodily existence suppressed as obscene. Another reflects the anti-Communist paranoia that cost Hamilton his job in the novel's opening pages, a world of surveillance, loyalty hearings, and purges that barely exaggerates the McCarthy era Dick was writing in. The last world, controlled by a character whose ideological beliefs lean in the other direction, has eliminated everything desirable in the name of a utopian collectivism.
Each world is a projection of someone's internal beliefs, coherent from the inside but stifling when imposed on everyone else. The novel does not single out any one ideology as uniquely dangerous. The theocrat, the puritan, the anti-Communist, and the collectivist all produce the same result when their subconscious is given the power to shape reality, a world in which everyone else must survive inside someone else's certainty.
Eye in the Sky was Dick's first standalone publication for Ace Books, not issued as half of an Ace Double. Originally published in 1957, it is among his earliest novels and one of the clearest anticipations of the false reality theme that would run through the rest of his career.
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