Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

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Philip K. Dick: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (2012)

English language

Published Nov. 20, 2012

ISBN:
978-0-547-57225-3
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4 stars (2 reviews)

"Grappling with many of the themes Philip K. Dick is best known for--identity, altered reality, drug use, and dystopias--Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is both a rollicking chase story and a meditation on reality. Jason Taverner--talk show host and man-about-town--wakes one day to find that no one knows who he is. In a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner must evade the secret police while trying to unravel the mystery of why no one remembers him"--

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 …

avatar for will_sargent

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4 stars

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