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Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (S.F. Masterworks) by: Philip K. Dick

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Rating: - A relatively straight-forward Dick tale

Jason Tavernor cares little for the society he lives in. Although life for most people is tough, he's rich and famous and life's a bowl of cherries. One day all that changes. He loses his identity card and suddenly nothing is quite the same again...

This is another of Dick's easily readable books that he seemed to knock out with barely a strain. It's short, it contains plenty of detail about a harsh and destructive government controlled world, yet it is never depressing or down-beat.

This just tells a simple story of a man who has everything and who one day wakes up to find he has nothing, but then gradually finds his true self through adversity. Within the simplistic scenario there is a richness that few other sf authors could manage with numerous great throwaway ideas. Most of Dick's obsessions are downplayed to concentrate on a classic paranoid situation, and although it is not as popular or as acclaimed as some of Dick's works, I reckon this is a good light-weight starting point for anyone who is unfamiliar with the author's work.

Rating: - Not one that I would recommend.

...annoyingly this his book seems to finish before it even gets going. The idea of turning the story away from the main protagonist at the end does not work and the odd plot device used to explain what starts off as an interesting idea is deeply unsatisfactory. Also wouldn't a 6 find it suprising that someone claiming to be a 7 is in fact older than them? But i wont worry about any mistakes in this book... its just too forgettable...

Rating: - No one has an imagination like Philip K Dick

This is a totally weird and wonderful book, like a lot of Dick's books and material its focus is his sort of schizoid imagination and perspective on reality.

It's difficult to review this book without running the risk of spoiling the book for anyone reading it for the first time. It features a main character in crisis, possibly an identity crisis but this becomes clearer as the plot proceeds to its conclusion, a drug of the most amazing and incredible, impossible character and lots of details about a distant future which perhaps to any other author would have formered the basis a complete story but for Dick are nothing more than window dressing to the main tale. For instance a purpose bred "celebrity class" and an ethnicity driven to extinction by favourable treatment and protected status!!

This book holds together very well and progesses to a very sure conclusion, it satisfies in a way that a lot of similar or weird fiction aiming at the same effects fails to and I didnt feel it had the anti-climatic feel of some of Dick's books (Time Out Of Joint, The Cosmic Puppets). I recommend this book to all readers and particularly to anyone who is new to Philip K. Dick's unique talent.

Rating: - Picking Apart Reality

In a time and place where the pols (US Police) and nats (national guard) carry out random ID checks to catch escaped students and send them to forced labour camps, what would happen if you woke up one day with no identity? Jason Taverner, host of a hit TV show with thirty thousand weekly viewers, find's himself in exactly this position. Not only have his ID cards disappeared, but his whole identity. One day a worldwide celebrity, the next a nobody, someone who no one has ever heard of before.

What makes Flow, My Tears, The Policeman Said such an excellent novel is that Dick spends more time concentrating on building solid plots and involved believable characters instead of bombarding the reader with far-fetched imaginations as many sci-fi authors can do. Through the novel you get to know interesting and unique characters, learn new fears and desires, and become totally immersed in a post-totalitarian future.

All in all a brilliant novel in Dick's own inimitable style, bleak, dystopian, and involved, a great read whether you are a fan of sci-fi or not

Rating: - Mediocre Dick

There are plenty of interesting ideas here, in Dick's usual manner of paranoia, and many of them will be familiar to fans of his, but I feel the author didn't work too hard on this novel and it's not very well written. It reads as though he made it up as he went along. The characters are vague and inconsistent. Plot devices are introduced, but then forgotten. Many of the background elements are never fully developed

If you're Dick fan it's worth reading for the ideas and the occasional funny moment, but I found this one of his lesser works. I recommend A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but Dick's oeuvre is very hit and miss.

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