Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

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Philip K. Dick: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (Paperback, 2001, Gollancz)

Mass Market Paperback, 204 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2001 by Gollancz.

ISBN:
978-1-85798-34-1
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OCLC Number:
77366434
Goodreads:
22584

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4 stars (2 reviews)

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story follows a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who wakes up in a world where he has never existed. The novel is set in a futuristic dystopia, where the United States has become a police state in the aftermath of a Second Civil War. It was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1974 and a Hugo Award in 1975, and was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1975.

TV star Jason Taverner is no more. Overnight, he looses his ID cards, the records about him in the official databases have strangely vanished and no one seems to know him any more. Even the songs he recorded don’t exist any more. In an oppressing police state, Jason struggels not to get arrested.

34 editions

Wonderfully dated!

3 stars

Flow My Tears, for me, is wonderfully dated classic science fiction that incorporates what has now become a bizarre mix of still-futuristic and old-fashioned ideas. Set in the then future of 1988, people drive flying cars and live in hovering apartments, but listen to LP records and have to run to find public payphones. Dick's totalitarian state is cleverly evoked to be a menacing presence surrounding our talk show host hero and I loved that its powerful face is actually backed by inept bureaucracy. Dick has a great descriptive turn of phrase and I could easily picture the decrepit forger's lab, the clinical police academy, luxury apartments and the Buckman's museum-cluttered home.

Once we come to the characters, I am less rapturous though. For someone supposedly genetically engineered to ooze charm, I found Jason Taverner surprisingly unlikeable. The female characters are pretty well defined, especially Alys and Mary Anne, and …

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4 stars