Rating: 
Summary: Solid, if not spectacular Dick
Review: Phil Dick is an author that one either gets or doesn't get. His philosophical, paranoiac brand of science fiction both alienates many fans of "hard" science fiction and attracts many non-genre fans. Two main questions run through all of his work: "What is reality?" and "What does it mean to be human?" This is one of his better-known novels, though it is not one of his best. The basic plot is hardly an original SF one -- unlike most Dick, which basically defines the word "original": a man wakes up in a world in which he does not exist. Dick, however, puts a unique spin on this tried-and-true formula, as only he could. Interspersed throughout the book are long philosophical dialogues on such subjects as the meaning of love, the purpose of pain, the nature of justice, and other such Big Matters that come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast. This sense of half-reality is a defining characteristic of all of Dick's work; one critic put it well when he said that he couldn't decide if Dick's dialogue is totally unreal, or more real than most. Never a prose artist, Dick writes with a hand that belies his pulp origins -- and yet, paradoxically, nevertheless laces his books with obscure literary references, startling philosophical asides, and half-used concepts that lesser authors could build an entire career on. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, in addition to having one of the absolute greatest titles in all of literature, takes a steady shot at much familiar Dickian subject matter: paranoia, the nature of reality, alienation, and a distrust and suspicion of the powers that be. One need not forget to take into account that this book was written in the early 70's, in the wake of Watergate -- (keep a sharp eye out for the hilarious and disturbing mention of Nixon that Dick subtly inserts into this book --, when the entire country seemed to be falling apart; if this scenario sounds familiar, pay close attention to the police state that Dick envisions in this novel. It actually seemed as if the country might, indeed, be heading toward the future that Dick outlined in this book -- and perhaps, alas, it does now as well. Dick created some great characters for this book. They act as real, living, breathing people do -- irrationally and full of contradictions. Jason Taverner, famous television star and protagonist, is by no means a hero; indeed, in some ways, he is quite a detestable character. On the other hand, the policeman, whom we are ostensibly supposed to hate, is the one whom we ultimately end up feeling sympathy and empathy for. This is yet another instance of Dick's shifting reality of contradictions and subversions. One thing I do not understand is the numerous complaints about this book's ending. I have read about a dozen PKD books, and this is one of the very few that HAD a satisfactory ending. With some of his other books, notably Ubik and The Man In the High Castle, I was quite frustrated at the ending -- not so here. Every loose end, for once, is finally tied up. That said, it would have been better if Dick had left the ending as it stood and not added the epilogue -- but one gets the feeling that Dick did this to parody the pop culture epilogue cliché, especially in light of the book's protagonist. All of this aside, I also think that this is not one of Dick's great books. It's a fine work, to be sure, but he has certainly done better: it is not as original as his best works, and it generally lacks their deeper meaning. This is certainly a great book for the Dick fan to read, but I would recommend starting with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or A Scanner Darkly.
Rating: 
Summary: One of Dicks's best. Recommend highly to fans of Dick.
Review: Philip Dick has combined several themes into one very good story that is simultaneously eccentric speculation and extrapolation of cultural analysis. Ranks right up with "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Radio Free Albemuth" Excellent.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining Philip K. Dick novel doesn't test thresholds
Review: Philip K. Dick (PKD) is known for some very imaginative (ok, weird) pieces of "blow your mind" science fiction. His work is often hard to understand, but almost always impressive and entertaining. 'Flow My Tears..." fits this mold rather nicely, but it certainly does not stretch PKD's capabilities.'Flow My Tears...' is a rather fun story about a popular TV celebrity who finds himself one day in a tacky hotel room and, to his horror, no one knows him. There isn't even a record of his birth. From here PKD takes on a journey of mind-altering drugs, an incestous police official and other peculiar individuals. As with most PKD novels, the ending doesn't quite fit together. But PKD neophytes will find this novel more palatable than his other material, mostly because it's (almost) conventional. There is no space travel, aliens, or precognitive powers to wrestle with. For PKD fans this is probably a good reason to not bother with 'Flow My Tears...'. Bottom line: an enjoyable yet lightweight PKD effort.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Ride With a Disappointing Ending
Review: Philip K. Dick's strength isn't in his prose or his dialogue or his characters. He didn't have the time to write beautifully polished sentences or to explore his protagonists deeply. What he did, and did magnificently, was tap into the wellspring of existential angst which we all possess. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said does this by having Jason Taverner, world-famous variety show host and singer, wake up in a world where he doesn't exist. No one recognizes him, and there is no record of his birth. But the world is the same--a police state where every citizen is a suspect, and the worst thing you can do is attract attention to yourself. The policeman of the title is one of Dick's best creations, an officer of the fascist state and a reprehensible man, yet one with whom it is difficult not to empathize. There are some wonderfully mind-wrenching moments here--from the oddly useful advice offered by a talking stuffed toy to the out-of-the-blue moment when Jason starts to slip back into his former existence--but it stumbles to a sloppy and unsatisfying ending. Still, it's a great ride, and if you're a fan of Dick this one is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: I wrote this while shroomin'
Review: Please do not read this if you are stupid. As is the case with most Dick, you have to look at the book sideways to fully comprehend it. The characters are so deep I felt like I knew them. They all have positive and negative qualities, unlike some authors who manage to pigen whole their characters into pure good or evil. The characters in Flow My Tears only want to be themselves even if they aren't shure of who that is. If you like to think alot about a book after finishing it, then this is a book for you. If your stupid, Amazon has a wide variety of Riddick inspired merchandise for you. Just say No.
Rating:
Summary: My solipsism is better than your solipsism...
Review: The premise of this novel is that by taking a toxic drug called KR-3 one can become "unbound in space" and start to inhabit alternate spatial corridors branching off from the "real" one. When Alys Buckman, a malevolent, sadomasochistic power-tripper, thoroughly decadent in all matters of sex and drugs, takes KR-3, she is able to pull Jason Taverner, popular TV entertainer, into an alternate reality where no one except her knows who he is. Taverner's "star" status is the reference point for his reality, until he wakes up in a world where people think he's insane, suffering from delusions of grandeur. He's solipsistic because he incorrectly believes the world still revolves around him. But Alys is a solipsist who happens to be right, for she makes Jason a performer on the stage of her mind, and her mind only. Terrifyingly for Taverner, he must survive as a nonperson in a police state where to be caught without identification can mean spending the rest of one's life in a forced-labor camp. Interestingly, the policeman Felix Buckman, Alys's brother, is portrayed sympathetically, even though he represents the State that crushes individuals like butterflies under its heel. He is the character who finally discovers love as a redemptive force. Dick holds out empathy as the only salvation from the unforgiving human and existential forces that try to expunge one's identity and cast one into the outer darkness of insanity.
Rating:
Summary: Sympathy for the Devil Cop
Review: The title of this novel, as PKD makes clear, comes from a song by the medieval English lute-player John Dowland. The point of this song is that it's better to suffer torments in Hell than cruelty on Earth. It's a pretty extreme attitude, to be sure, but many of the characters in PKD's novel would probably agree. What makes this a remarkable book is that, even after that much pain, at least one character finds enough strength to hope. One of PKD's chief critics has divided the man's work into about four periods, and calls Flow My Tears the transition into the last one. What puts Flow My Tears at the nexus point between two great periods is that it wraps up the author's interest in thriller-style plotting and surreal story devices, and brings very much to the forefront his concern with, of all things, love. As Jason Taverner moves through a dangerous world, it eventually becomes clear that he can't possibly survive without the help of a great many people, few of whom recognize him and all of whom place themselves in serious jeopardy just by speaking to him. And then it turns out that even his greatest and most powerful enemy has a heart that can be broken. PKD was always on the side of the regular guy, so it's not too surprising that the rich and famous protagonist gets little sympathy. Instead, the book seems to be on the side of the folks he meets, including barflies, neurotics, simple craftspeople and activists. They all try so hard to live with hope, even when there is none, and that includes the police - turns out the system tends to victimize them, too. So when they capture the TV star Jason Taverner, despite the fear they inspire in him, it turns out they're really not that much of a threat. Well, of course not; in Flow My Tears, the villain is the system, not the cops. Perhaps this is why some other reviewers have been disappointed in the book's ending, and they have a point. Flow My Tears does indeed lose power when Jason Taverner, a bright but not very nice guy, meets the police general Felix Buckman, and after all the running and terror it turns out that General Buckman isn't so dangerous after all. Well, that doesn't bother me too much because PKD pulls off a neat trick and reestablishes the story's power - he shifts his attention from Taverner to Buckman and you realize that Flow My Tears was never Taverner's story to begin with. We should have known. Buckman is, after all, the title character, the weeping policeman. Poor guy - as the story ends he's lost just about everything he has ever cared about (it's rather surprising to learn that he cares about anything, being our presumptive hero's nemesis and all). Sobbing, he reaches out to the first human he can find, gets some comfort and understanding from him in a very moving way, and determines to reshape his life. I get choked up every time I read it. Okay, okay, PKD wasn't the world's greatest technician and even his best work got a little careless at times, but his audience loves him because he usually told them that their struggles were not in vain, that their lives meant something to him if to no one else, and that the machinery of the world was, in the end, weaker than they were. In his best work I feel like he's given me permission to feel sad when I'm hurt, and that's nowhere more true than in Flow My Tears. Benshlomo says, The mechanics are important, but the heart is vital.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Engaging Fiction
Review: This book has what so much of science fiction lacks - wonderful characters. Not wonderful in the sense that they are good people. Rather, Dick's characters are wonderfully real, with both good and bad aspects, and everything in between. The world they inhabit is a somewhat surreal alternate/future reality that allows us to see how they deal when the definition of what is real becomes blurred.
The only negative comment I might make is that Dick's vision is colored by the mid-70's in which he wrote it, which dates his fictional "future" a bit. But this is really a trivial flaw - just think of it as an alternate reality.
This book is so wonderfully written that I quickly found myself unable to put it down. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Strange and strangely moving
Review: This book is indicative of the paradox of Philip Dick. It shows that, for all his lapses, he was one of the great writers of the Twentieth Century. Populist pulp sci-fi that meditates on Kant, Jung, Proust, Joyce and renaissance music. A classic 'thriller' plot-line that metamorphoses into something entirely other. A hero who isn't the main character of the book, and who isn't even a hero. Minor characters who appear as the fully rounded protagonists of their own worlds. Outragously dated futurism alongside spot-on perceptive prediction. Frankly poor, slapdash writing that has a uniquely moving and lasting effect on the reader. Like most of Dick's writing, this is a work of flawed genius. Dick simultaneously embraces and subverts the science fiction genre to create his own unique, fractured vision of existence. In doing so he shows us that the 'final frontier' of Sci-fi is not space but the human heart.
Rating:
Summary: A little more about possible universes
Review: This is a great book in the same way many of Dick's books are: the reader is placed in the neverending crossfire of ideas and plot twists, and when the end finally comes, all you can do is ask yourself: "What happened?" Not everyone likes that feeling, but I do, and Flow My Tears is a fine representation of all the things I mentioned. The basic idea is fascinating, and as always, Dick handles it well, giving the reader a feeling of satisfaction: my time was not wasted reading this.
|
