Eye in the Sky
Philip K. Dick
 While on a visit to the (fictional) Belmont Bevatron, eight people become stuck in a series of subtly unreal worlds, caused by the malfunction of the particle accelerator. These are later revealed to be solipsistic manifestations, bringing the story in line with Dick's penchant for subjective realities. As well as his future discussions of theology and fears about McCarthy-era authoritarianism, the novel skewers several human foibles. Jack Hamilton, the central protagonist, is dismissed from his job at the California Maintenance Labs due to McCarthy-era paranoia about his wife Marsha's left-wing political sympathies. Other affected members of the injured touring party include Bill Laws, a Physics PhD who happens to be a Negro, who happens to be employed as a tour guide within the plant. The above-mentioned Arthur Silvester is an elderly believer in the obsolete geocentric cosmology. Joan Reiss is a pathologically paranoid woman. Edith Pritchet is a maternal but censorious elderly woman. In succession, the group moves through solpsistic personalized alternate realms related to the beliefs and opinions of Arthur Silvester, Pritchet, Reiss and a hardline Marxist caricature of contemporary US society. Marsha Hamilton's subconscious perceptions, however, did not produce this alternate reality, as originally thought. It originates instead from an unexpected source, revealed as Charles McFeyffe, a Communist sympathizer who works as chief security officer in the California Maintenance Labs plant. At story's end Jack Hamilton and Bill Laws form a small business that seeks advances in stereophonic technology. The disclosure of McFeyffe's Marxist allegiances is dismissed as completely unprovable.