The Man in the Maze is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg, originally serialized in the magazine, Worlds of If April in May 1968, and published in bookstores the following year. It tells the tale of a man rendered incapable of interacting normally with other human beings by his uncontrollable psychic abilities. The novel is inspired by Sophocles' play Philoctetes, with the roles of Odysseus, Neoptolemus and Philoctetes played by Boardman, Rawlins, and Muller, respectively. The novel deals with themes of isolation and social alienation, using psychic powers as an allegory for human interaction. In 1968, the United States adopted the Architectural Barriers Act, which mandated that public buildings be accessible to people with disabilities. In the same year, Silverberg published The Man in the Maze, in serial form, with it being novelized in 1969. In a typical literary reversal of the New Wave, in the story, a disabled man uses an alien labyrinthine city to reject abled society. Silverberg reframed the ancient notions of disability discussed in Philoctetes in order to highlight contemporary debates of disability and project them into a utopian future that had apparently eliminated the notion. In doing so Silverberg stressed how "process, ability and disability come to construct and problematize both individual and collective human identity for the past, present, and future".:143 Silverberg employed similar techniques in Dying Inside. Plot summary The action takes place in the future. The main character is Richard Muller, a retired diplomat, who finds himself forced to hide from the human race on the uninhabited planet of Lemnos. He lives there in the center of an ancient city-maze, built by a vanished race. The outer zones of the maze are filled with lethal traps to discourage entrance into the central zone. In his earlier life he had honestly served humanity, traveled to hundreds of worlds, endured hardship and danger. The career diplomat Charles Boardman invited him to make contact with the inhabitants of the planet Beta Hydri IV — the only intelligent alien race thus far discovered in the galaxy. When Muller returned after spending five months on Hydra without seeming to establish any meaningful communication with the natives at all, he discovered that other human beings could not bear to be close to him as he emanated an intolerable mental repulsion field. His own inner emotions were so fully exposed to anyone near him that they