I would bet virtual dollars to spacetime donuts that Rudy Rucker is a fan of Philip K. Dick's Eye in the Sky. While Dick's book is not quite as gonzo or packed-to-the-gills with off-the-wall humor as Rucker's fiction, it is, none-the-less, a highly entertaining, action-packed romp through a twisted wonderland of theology, paranoia, and bigotry. What's more, Dick never even attempts to explain the “science” or much of the logic behind any of it. He just lets it rip and packs his pages with one outlandish moment after another.
It all starts at the Belmont Bevatron, a simple Macguffin, a SF device to get the plot rolling. It's some kind of super-particle accelerator, deflector, proton-collider, thingamajig, that malfunctions and sends Jack Hamilton, Marsha, his wife, and a handful of other hapless victims off into a twisting world spiraling out of control. But whose world is it? Just who is in charge of this preposterous place? As the clues begin to reveal themselves, and the walls of unreality phase in an out of existence, the gang finds out that things can quickly go from bad to worse, and they must stay alert if they ever hope to return to the normal world.
Eye in the Sky is clearly an earlier Dick novel; it has more in common with something like The Cosmic Puppets than it does A Scanner Darkly or VALIS. It's what you might call a pot-boiler, probably a story Phil quickly wrote to pay some bills. Dick was known to write a novel in a matter of days, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is one of those. However, it's not bad, nor is it lazy. On the contrary, it is actually incredibly entertaining and competently written. It has the markings of a hastily constructed narrative, but one that benefits from this scatter shot, shoot-from-the-hip method.
I've never read a boring Dick book, but I wouldn't call many of his novels action packed; this one is though. It moves along at a breakneck pace. The world the characters find themselves in is actually a series of worlds, increasingly becoming more dangerous and strange. One world is controlled by the power of religion and superstition. In this world, people don't work for a salary, they work for the chance to pray for a certain amount of money, and once prayed for, the money falls from the sky! It's a world of real miracles. In another world the characters find themselves trapped in a demonic house that comes to life and tries to eat them - a literal domestic horror story. And yet another world finds itself victim to the whims of a woman who seems to hate everything, and with each passing thought she wishes all of existence away. Just imagine a world in which the most close minded, bigoted person around could make things vanish.
Eye in the Sky is practically a fantasy, especially when compared to the majority of Dick's fiction. However, it is not completely devoid of subtext or social commentary. As a matter of fact, it is blatantly commentating on the great SF theme of its day: the red scare. In many ways, I am thankful that communism existed as it did during the 1950s and throughout the cold war; the political ideology has given us genrehounds a plethora of great stories. Paranoia was often a driving factor behind Dick's narratives, and here he elevates it to an absurd and fantastic level.
It's always a pleasure to crack open a new Philip K. Dick novel. I really don't know how I am going to feel when there are no more new books of his for me to read - an event that is quickly approaching. There just isn't another SF author - dead, or alive - that offers the same kind of experience, or one that is even remotely close to it. Eye in the Sky is a great read; it's fun, exciting, thrilling, and darkly comic. While it may not be as mature or nuanced as his best work, it is definitely a solid B-level book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
