Eye In The Sky by Philip K. Dick

 

This is an interesting piece of What If fiction.  A group of people are on a tour of a particle accelerator when a new component fails.  The platform they are standing on above the accelerator ring collapses.  They fall and are exposed to radiation.  Then they find themselves being treated in the hospital and released.  Before long they begin to realize they're "not in Kansas anymore".

 

Magic charms help heal them.  A major electronics firm is in the business of doing God's work, and even has an intercom with which they can talk to God.  Angels help provide information to engineers - or punish those who do wrong.  Rather than getting a regular salary, you pray to receive money and God gives you whatever he feels like giving.  An auto's owner’s manual is a collection of prayers that can help resolve problems with the car.  The major religion is a 19th century American variant of fundamentalist Islam and the Catholic Church barely manages to have a few dingy store-front churches.  The Sun circles around the Earth, and the "planets" are small things that go around the Earth in Ptolemaic spheres.  And from a vantage point high above the Earth one can see the fires of Hell...

 

Especially for the protagonist, who is a scientifically-inclined electronics engineer, this just isn't right.  He tries to find an explanation for their situation, searches for signs of consistent rules and seeks a way back to the familiar world.

 

We visit this and other strange worlds.  Saying much more might spoil the story.

 

It provides us with Dick's view of parts of our culture past and present.  Or at least his present.  It was written in 1957.  Some readers may cringe a little at his use of the term "Negro" (although that was the politically correct word in 1957).

 

The story touches on religion, race relations, the role of science and religion in society, the "Red scare" of the 1950's, etc.  And it's partly about seeing what you'd get if you took a world view to its ultimate conclusions.

 

Although a particle accelerator happens to be the excuse for finding ourselves on this What If journey, this is not a story about a view of the future or advanced tech or carrying out scientific work or anything else that would necessarily make it meet one's usual definition of "science fiction".  This would be more accurately grouped with books such as Gulliver's Travels, 1984, and other social-commentary What If books.