Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is one of Philip K. Dick’s best. Yet unlike many main characters from PKD’s books, protagonist Jason Taverner is not a misunderstood, delusional recluse, but rather a world famous, genetically superior celebrity. Supporting protagonist Felix Buckman is a police general with only a handful of individuals more powerful. PKD uses these worldly heroes to illustrate the transience and frailty of what people understand as important. Taverner spends a couple of days wh...

This is my fifth PKD book this year, and while I thought it was beautifully written in parts, and its depiction of a police state appropriately chilling, it lacked many of the reality-bending twists and macabre humor of some of his best books, like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and UBIK.The main characters Jason Taverner and Felix Buckman were sufficiently troubled and complex to keep my interest, but the events of the middle portion of the book dragged a bit, although the ending does prov...

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.The Nature of Reality: "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" by Philip K. DickFlow, my tears, fall from your springs! Exiled forever, let me mourn; Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn.  Down vain lights, shine you no more!No nights are dark enough for thoseThat in despair their lost fortunes deplore.Light doth but shame disclose. Never may my woes be relieved,Since pity is fled;And tears and sighs and...

Of all the classic science fiction authors: Nobody but nobody predicted our surreal 21st century like P.K. Dick! It can't be said enough. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a dystopian novel, which is a worn genre at this point. Yet what sets it apart is the way it intersects a deeply paranoid police state... with shallow celebrity pop culture. Feeling familiar yet? The main character is a very unlikable talk show host, who finds himself an "unperson" one morning: nobody remembers who he is an...

CRITIQUE:Vanishing Act (The Disappearance of a Celebrity)This novel starts with a Kafkaesque premise.The protagonist, singer and entertainer Jason Taverner, regains consciousness after surgery for what his doctor calls a "somatic invasion". He has been used to having 30 million fans for his weekly television programme. Now he has woken up, not so much a Kafkaesque insect, as an ex-celebrity, in "a lousy, bug-infested cheap wino hotel...like he had lived in years ago, at the start of his career.....

Grand Theft IdentityAn old-fashioned Western dressed as sci-fi? Could be, but with a Dickian twist: everyone loses, and no one gets the girl. Or a murder mystery? Only no one is murdered. I tried my best all the way through to pick up the thread. It eluded me entirely.The guy in the White Hat, Jason, is an intelligent, handsome, talented and popular musical celebrity. He is also a narcissistic, misogynistic druggie who manipulates women to get where he thinks he should be. He is fundamentally am...

This is a somewhat typical Philip K. Dick novel, albeit not quite as good as I expected.PDK is mostly famous for the movies that have been made from his novels. His books are a bit obscure, even among many Science Fiction fans, and for a good reason: he's not a very good storyteller.Now, scifi fans are frequently a tolerant bunch. Among them are fans that will tolerate abysmal writing because the author nails the science (typically physics). Others couldn't care less about hard science, but want...

You can criticise Dick all you like for being wrong about flying cars, or thinking the LP record was for ever (note: it isn't?), but he is writing science fiction and, as Ray Bradbury points out far more eloquently than will I, that is about ideas. It isn't about sentence construction, plot or character development. If you wanted to, it is easy enough to criticise this book on all these counts, but so what? Why would you bother? What matters is....http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...

I wish his fans would make more of a point of highlighting the fact that PKD is, like, Charlie Kaufman-style funny, just pure absurdist dialogue, and that reading him isn't about sitting around science-stupid and crouched with your arms crossed in the corner at your middle school boyfriend's house feeling totally out of your element because you don't know what all this machine-y weenie nerd stuff is about. His humor reminds me of a bit of Pynchon, but if Pynchon were about 1000 times more access...

Probably 3.5 stars, but I tend towards grade-inflation with authors I admire, so -- just to be safe -- I'm rounding down on this one (until I decide I want to round up in 3 years). I liked the first 4/5, but the last quintile bugged a little. It started brilliantly, but ended with a J. Leno (long explanation of the joke just told). It was like towards the end PKD discounted his readers would get it, so he left simple instructions (remove plastic before eating) and tied the whole thing off neat (...

“St. Paul said, ‘If I have not love then I am jack shit’... or something like that.”—Phillip K Dick, 1977 interviewJason Tavener, celebrity singer and television personality beloved by millions, wakes up one morning in a dingy hotel room to find that nobody has any idea who he is. His agent has never heard of him; his superstar girlfriend has never heard of him; people in the street don't recognise him. He has no ID and no papers – which in a futuristic police state is a serious problem.What do

SF Masterworks #46: A haunting cover, a haunting constructed reality and a haunting story itself! PKD brings it all - a post Second American Civil War world where the student campuses of America were on the losing side; where the vast majority of citizens live under police martial law, and the super rich live in the clouds, albeit not literally.Jason Taverner is a 'Six' one of the pre-destined elite, a well known and heavily feted TV star whose world turns around one day and finds himself unreco...

Phillip K. Dick is a philosopher in a pulp writer's body. His books reads like pulp fiction in style but are loaded with philosophical inquires regarding reality and perception. Sometimes so much so that the text can't keep up with it. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is one example. The plot centers around a celebrity who finds himself no longer remembered. To be more precise, he no longer exists. All his identity is wiped out and no one knows him not even his friends. This is actually one of

Flow My Tears, the“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”― Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman SaidFlow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Written in 1974 and set in the near future (at that time) of 1988, Philip K. Dick’s haunting dystopian novel addresses a range of existential, social and political themes: identity and loss of identity, celebrity and ordinariness, subjective perceptions and objective realities, state sponsored mind control and drug induced mind bending, genetic engineering...

This is my third PKD book and I enjoyed it. I appreciate how his books are extremely unique and original. This story was like the others: simple, clearly written, and to-the-point. His writing style stays away from over embellishing and over the top verbiage; his stories are always very direct. This story gives us a look into a police state, identity, senses of control (or loss of control), and other details associated with a authoritarian society born out of a Second Civil War.The key to readin...

That .GIF image perfectly captures the range of distinct reactions that Philip K. Dick's Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said got out of me in the expanse of reading it in the last four days. There was bafflement--then disbelief--then mild disgust--and, finally, karmic relief. Don't get me wrong, it's not a badly written book. Of course fucking not, it's PHILIP K. DICK! His outstanding Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep will forever destroy me in this world and in another parallel existence becaus...

"So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power."- Philip K. Dick, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later"It's going to take a while to process this one. PKD's novels often strike an existential chord and FMTTPS is no exception. Amoral TV personality Jason Taverner is attacked

“Love isn't just wanting another person the way you want to own an object you see in a store. That's just desire. You want to have it around, take it home and set it up somewhere in the apartment like a lamp. Love is"--she paused, reflecting--"like a father saving his children from a burning house, getting them out and dying himself. When you love you cease to live for yourself; you live for another person.” What? This in a Philip K. Dick novel? This is an unusual PKD book, though you could a

DAW Collectors #146Cover Artists: Hans Ulrich Osterwalder , Ute Osterwalder.Name: Dick, Philip Kindred, Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, USA, 116 December 1928 - 02 March 1982. Alternate Names: , Mark Van Dyke, Chipdip K. Kill, Richard Phillipps."Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" was published in 1974, the same year Philip K. Dick had his famous 'revelation' that led to his extremely different later works such as VALIS. Presumably this book was completed before that revelation. It stands as perha...

Despondent over the failure of his fourth marriage and at the same time stimulated to fresh creativity after his first mescaline trip, cult author Philip K. Dick worked on what would be his 29th published sci-fi novel, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said," from March to August 1970. Ultimately released in 1974, an important year in Phil's life (the year of his legendary "pink light" incident), the book went on to win the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award, was nominated for both the Hugo...