Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said [Paperback]

Philip K. Dick (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 29, 1993

>On October 11 the television star Jason Taverner is so famous that 30 million viewers eagerly watch his prime-time show. On October 12 Jason Taverner is not a has-been but a never-was -- a man who has lost not only his audience but all proof of his existence. And in the claustrophobic betrayal state of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, loss of proof is synonyms with loss of life.

Taverner races to solve the riddle of his disappearance", immerses us in a horribly plausible Philip K. Dick United States in which everyone -- from a waiflike forger of identity cards to a surgically altered pleasure -- informs on everyone else, a world in which omniscient police have something to hide. His bleakly beautiful novel bores into the deepest bedrock self and plants a stick of dynamite at its center.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A TV celebrity of the near future suddenly finds that he has no identity in this SF variation on the amnesia novel, which suffers from an inadequate ending. Vintage also releases, for $10 each, Dick's Now Wait for Last Year (*-74220-4 ), about a doctor who is treating the world's most important and sickest man, and The World Jones Made (*-74219-0 ), about a fanatic clairvoyant.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Dick [was] many authors: a poor man's Pynchon, an oracular postmodern, a rich product of the changing counterculture" Village Voice

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (June 29, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067974066X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679740667
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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#47 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#84 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

#47 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#84 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars That's some good Dick July 16, 1999

By Brent Jones

Format:Paperback

My first Dick book. While not for everyone, it's pretty accessible to anyone who can appreciate alternate reality/paranoid sci-fi. It's classic man-against-the-clock stolen identity stuff in the tradition of D.O.A. and (to a much, much lesser extent) Enemy of the State. Jason Taverner, anti-hero as he may be, is a great character in which to carry the main storyline of arrogant celebrity turned underground fugitive, but the smaller characters are what make this book into something more than "one man out to get back what was stolen from him." When read as a whole, it is a great testament to being human in the face of mechanical adversity. Not clanking robots, mind you (although it does have it's share of cool futuristic gadgetry), but rather the mechanisms imposed by society, and ourselves, that would otherwise strip away or mask what is good and human in everyone. The best character in the book (in my humble opinion) is the policeman who has a ferocious hard-on for nailing the fugitive Taverner, and from whom the wonderful title is taken. To those who start this book and are inclined to put it down partway through, be assured! Good things will come to those who wait. The scene at the end that involves the title is one of the singly most beautiful ever penned, in sci-fi or any other genre. But it is a very subtle beauty and perhaps not suited for every reading palette. If yours is a refined taste that can grasp a sentiment that is not delivered with a sledgehammer, and enjoys it in the setting of a eerie future America that smacks dangerously of our present one, read this book post-haste.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Science-fiction with a broken heart, & a tear in its eye." October 5, 1996

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Written straight from Philip K. Dick's broken and wandering heart, this is one of the genre's best, and saddest, books. Instead of clanking heavy-metal robotics, quantum theory, or brave new worlds, Dick offers up our future peopled by fragile humans, all looking for love. It is impossible to read this book, and not feel Phil's heart breaking as he wrote every beautiful word

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just short of a PKD masterpiece March 18, 2006

By Eric San Juan VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

A truly astonishing work that, in my opinion, should easily stand among PKD's best work save for one flaw - an unnecessary epilogue that saps a bit of power from the otherwise gut-wrenching finish, putting a happy polish on what should have been a more bleak finale.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is, like the works that best represent Philip K. Dick's career, a "What is reality?" book. The scenario he lets unfold - one day a guy is the Johnny Carson of his time, known and loved by all, the next day he is an unknown without an identity and doesn't know why - keeps you turning pages, wanting to know the truth as badly as the protagonist. The world he creates is, as always, intricate in its not-quite-the-world-we-know details. And the ending? Wow. Remove that epilogue (which in a very unDickian manner wraps everything up in a neat little bow at the end) and it's very powerful. If you've read PKD before, this will be familiar to you - twisted reality, hazy drugs, a world turned on its head - and if you haven't, Flow My Tears offers a good look at everything that makes up what a Philip k. Dick book is.

If only it didn't have that darn Hollywood ending ...