Rating: 
Summary: a vase that could launch a thousand ships
Review: I thought the ending was fantastic. Not satisfying? Hardly. I found it to be entertainingly and purposefully glib, yet replete with serious meaning. Satisfying meaning. Meanings within meanings. Yes, one either gets and appreciates this sort of thing or one does not. Which isn't to say that anyone who 'gets it' has to 'get it' in exactly the same way. Such is the ambiguity of true art. It is, however, a well documented scientific fact that those who do not 'get' PKD are a lot less fun to have around at parties.Flawed genius? Yes, maybe, but Dick was a creator of beautiful art, even if his art was, out of necessity, posing as pulp SF. But, hey, the absence of flaw in beauty is in ITSELF a flaw, as has been astutely noted. Okay, yeah yeah yeah, what is real? What makes us human? That jazz has been thoroughly covered, and rightly so. But another one of the many, many (this IS by Dick, after all) admirable threads that tie all the characters of 'Flow My Tears' together is the ever-popular and universal theme of love...wanting to love, wanting to be loved, temporizing over love, gettin' some love (woo-hoo!), crazy-nutty-unrealistic love, incestuous love (whoa, didn't see THAT coming! Go Dick!), meaningless-life-draining-phone-oriented-cyber-love (curiously prophetic), losing one's love, having one's love stomped all over by forces that are beyond one's control. And, yes, we are INDEED living in a 'police state', my naively optimistic, overly pampered and isolated brothers and sisters. That's ALREADY true as blue, and getting worse. But, in the end, not unlike so many real-life characters I've met, Dick's characters seem to never get enough love. And who can blame them? Not I. But, out of all the characters in 'Flow My Tears', do any of them actually find love? Yes! The beautiful blue vase was "much loved." Good for it! I'm satisfied. What? Yes, the blue vase DOES count as a character. It surely does. Oh, whatever. Please remind me never to invite you to any parties.
Rating:
Summary: Surreal science fiction
Review: It had been nearly twenty years since I had last read Flow My Tears. At the time, it had been my first exposure to Philip K. Dick, and it easily motivated me to continue collecting his works, to the point where I have almost all his published stories, even the obscure ones. At long last, I have revisited the work that started it all for me, and I was not disappointed. The plot is almost Twilight-Zonish: Jason Taverner, a major talk-show host suddenly wakes up to find all traces of his identity have disappeared and no one remembers him. In the oppressive near-future world that he lives in, everything requires proof of identity and it doesn't take much to find yourself suddenly in a forced labor camp, so Jason has some real problems. Although this in itself doesn't sound all that original, it is in the execution that this story succeeds. Dick goes beyond the lost identity story to show a nightmarish world that could follow from our own. Quaintly, the story takes place in 1988, but just imagine it 14 years in the future (which was the timeframe based on when the story was written). It would not be pleasant to live in this world. Dick has two common themes running throughout most of his stories: what is it to be human, and what is reality? This second theme is examined creatively in this work. It is a definite loss that Dick died relatively young, before he was really known; now, he is more recognized, and his influence in science fiction is hard to understate. This is a great book to be introduced to him with.
Rating:
Summary: Ender wiggen Raves about Phillip K. Dicks masterpiece.
Review: Jason Taverners a talkshow host one day and a bum on the street. Piece the story back together. Dont give up.
Rating:
Summary: The end will blow your mind
Review: My favorite parts of PK Dick's books are the characters themselves and the fact that they all come to question their reality, causing you to question yours.
As in real life, good characters do bad things and visa-versa, unlike some authors who manage to pigeon whole their characters into pure good or evil. They only want to be themselves even if they are not sure of whom that is.
If you like to contemplate a book after finishing it, then this is a book for you.
Rating:
Summary: That's some good Dick
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Peerless sci-fi from the master of surreality
Review: Once again, Philip K. Dick blends startling realism with surreal sci-fi. This time, the focus of his book is one Jason Taverner, TV star, singer and Six. One morning, Taverner wakes up to find himself in a low-grade motel he doesn't recognize. He quickly realizes that he has "vanished"-- all memory of him has been expunged, and he simply doesn't exist anymore, in a police state where not having an identity is a crime in itself.
The book begins by focusing fairly steadily on Taverner, a classic Dicksian protagonist. He is confused, disoriented, but profoundly in control of his desperate situation. After meeting up with a deranged identity forger, he finds himself at odds with the ubiquitous "police" that run people's everyday lives. However, at about this point Dick introduces Police General Felix Buckham and his fetishist sister Alys. The two are constantly at odds, the general's firm belief in rules clashing with Alys's firm belief in breaking them. Alys later becomes a more important character, as she "saves" Taverner after his second run-in with the general. After taking him to her house, she feeds him a hallucinogen, then goes to get him the counterdrug. Along the way, she dies, leaving Taverner the main suspect. He flees, and begins to realize that people know about him again. He hypothesizes that the drug she gave him was what had maintained his illusion of stardom, and that he was really just a nobody, a bum. I will not reveal the ending in this review, except to say that it far stranger than even Taverner believes.
PKD starts out strong with this one, but his focus begins to shift to Buckham later in the book. With his usual attention to detail, Dick hints vaguely at ways this world differs from our own: the lockdowns of campuses, the legality of certain drugs, and most of all the experiments that created superhumans called "Sixes." What the Sixes do exactly is unclear, but Taverner is one, and he has powers of persuasion far beyond the human norm. This and other vagueties are resolved in an epilogue that seems unusually contrived; perhaps it is mocking the omnipotent epilogues that wrap things up so neatly, a common feature in contemporary sci-fi. Whatever its message, Flow My Tears raises thought-provoking questions on life, love, and loss.
Rating:
Summary: Peerless sci-fi from the master of surreality
Review: Once again, Philip K. Dick blends startling realism with surreal sci-fi. This time, the focus of his book is one Jason Taverner, TV star, singer and Six. One morning, Taverner wakes up to find himself in a low-grade motel he doesn't recognize. He quickly realizes that he has "vanished"-- all memory of him has been expunged, and he simply doesn't exist anymore, in a police state where not having an identity is a crime in itself.
The book begins by focusing fairly steadily on Taverner, a classic Dicksian protagonist. He is confused, disoriented, but profoundly in control of his desperate situation. After meeting up with a deranged identity forger, he finds himself at odds with the ubiquitous "police" that run people's everyday lives. However, at about this point Dick introduces Police General Felix Buckham and his fetishist sister Alys. The two are constantly at odds, the general's firm belief in rules clashing with Alys's firm belief in breaking them. Alys later becomes a more important character, as she "saves" Taverner after his second run-in with the general. After taking him to her house, she feeds him a hallucinogen, then goes to get him the counterdrug. Along the way, she dies, leaving Taverner the main suspect. He flees, and begins to realize that people know about him again. He hypothesizes that the drug she gave him was what had maintained his illusion of stardom, and that he was really just a nobody, a bum. I will not reveal the ending in this review, except to say that it far stranger than even Taverner believes.
PKD starts out strong with this one, but his focus begins to shift to Buckham later in the book. With his usual attention to detail, Dick hints vaguely at ways this world differs from our own: the lockdowns of campuses, the legality of certain drugs, and most of all the experiments that created superhumans called "Sixes." What the Sixes do exactly is unclear, but Taverner is one, and he has powers of persuasion far beyond the human norm. This and other vagueties are resolved in an epilogue that seems unusually contrived; perhaps it is mocking the omnipotent epilogues that wrap things up so neatly, a common feature in contemporary sci-fi. Whatever its message, Flow My Tears raises thought-provoking questions on life, love, and loss.
Rating:
Summary: Flow My Tears, a must for Phil K Dick fans
Review: One of my favorite books by Phil K. Dick, Flow My Tears is consistant and enjoyable throughout, despite the arcane and sometimes outrageous depiction of a world of excessive police surveilance. A lot of Philip K Dick books lose their steam somewhere around the last third of the book, but not this one. A must for fans of Phil K Dick.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining companion piece to Blade Runner
Review: Or, as insiders know that work, "Why do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Twenty-five years before we had William Gibson and "cyberpunk," we had Philip K. Dick, and if nothing else, this work proves that he was way ahead of his time and that his successors in the genre have done little to build upon his ideas or surpass his vision. In Flow My Tears, we are shown a near-future society transformed to a neo-fascistic police state. Jason Taverner, a pop superstar, finds himself one day without an identity: his friends and lovers don't recognize or remember him and his music and TV shows are unknown. Most significantly, perhaps, he does not have the precious ID cards without which he cannot safely travel more than a few blocks without being waylaid by police and sent into a forced labor camp. Taverner must contend with a rogue's gallery of bizarre and memorable characters to discover how his identity was lost and attempt to recover it. Sometimes Dick's writing is clunky - it is as if ten words at random were removed from the paragraph, and the reader is left slightly uneasy, but this may contribute to the book's strong mood of paranoia. A touch of psychedelia a la Burroughs compounds this effect. Luckily for the reader, unlike in many of Burroughs's works, there actually is a story here. And the characterizations are excellent. Unfortunately, however, somewhere towards the ending, Dick breaks down. The book ends quickly and crudely, like a field amputation given by a half-trained medic in the middle of a battle. In addition, there are allusions to Jung, Renaissance poetry, and several other thinkers or artistic movements which obviously influenced Dick, but I feel that he could have done more to develop these references and themes. All in all, though it is a prescient and moving work and one that should be enjoyable to any science-fiction fans.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining companion piece to Blade Runner
Review: Or, as insiders know that work, "Why do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Twenty-five years before we had William Gibson and "cyberpunk," we had Philip K. Dick, and if nothing else, this work proves that he was way ahead of his time and that his successors in the genre have done little to build upon his ideas or surpass his vision. In Flow My Tears, we are shown a near-future society transformed to a neo-fascistic police state. Jason Taverner, a pop superstar, finds himself one day without an identity: his friends and lovers don't recognize or remember him and his music and TV shows are unknown. Most significantly, perhaps, he does not have the precious ID cards without which he cannot safely travel more than a few blocks without being waylaid by police and sent into a forced labor camp. Taverner must contend with a rogue's gallery of bizarre and memorable characters to discover how his identity was lost and attempt to recover it. Sometimes Dick's writing is clunky - it is as if ten words at random were removed from the paragraph, and the reader is left slightly uneasy, but this may contribute to the book's strong mood of paranoia. A touch of psychedelia a la Burroughs compounds this effect. Luckily for the reader, unlike in many of Burroughs's works, there actually is a story here. And the characterizations are excellent. Unfortunately, however, somewhere towards the ending, Dick breaks down. The book ends quickly and crudely, like a field amputation given by a half-trained medic in the middle of a battle. In addition, there are allusions to Jung, Renaissance poetry, and several other thinkers or artistic movements which obviously influenced Dick, but I feel that he could have done more to develop these references and themes. All in all, though it is a prescient and moving work and one that should be enjoyable to any science-fiction fans.
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