Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Philip K. Dick

Language: English

Publisher: Daw

Published: Jan 1, 2000

Description:

THEODORE STURGEON writes:

"I want to tell you about Philip K. Dick's new novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. It is not for nothing that the new rash of academic studies of sf, which may nod in passing to a parade of our greats, give whole pages, whole chapters, to Philip K. Dick. Writing a concise description of one of his books, sketching one of his plots, is like trying to carve a leafless tree in granite. Real and solid (and strange, and far out) as his characters may be, they all exhibit complex traceries of personality quite impossible to predict and sometimes just the other side of the reader's ability to understand. The effect, of course, is the creation of a work that your head won't put down even if your hands do.

"The policeman here is that rarity, a totally detestable character with whom you must empathize, and with whom, ultimately, you will sympathise as well. But he isn't the protagonist. It isn't his story, though the story could not exist without him. The narrative belongs to Jason Taverner, TV superstar, who awakes in a world in which he has never existed. This is not the first time this unset fling concept has been used but I will guarantee that you won't anticipate the rationale for this one until Dick is good and ready to give it to you. And then there's the girl called Alys . . . now there's one you'll forget about as readily as a tattoo on the back of your hand. Buy this one and brace yourself for a mystery tour."

--Galaxy

Jason Tavener woke up one morning to find himself completely unknown. The night before he had been the top-rated television star with millions of devoted watchers. The next day he was just an unidentified walking object, whose face nobody recognised, of whom no one had heard, and without the I.D. papers required in that near future. When he finally found a man who would agree to counterfeiting such cards for him, that man turned out to be a police informer. And then Taverner found out not only what it was like to be a nobody but also to be hunted by the whole apparatus of society. It was obvious that in some way Taverner had become the pea in in some sort of cosmic shell game - but how? And why? Philip K. Dick takes the reader on a walking tour of solipsism's scariest margin in his latest novel about theage we are already half into. Cover art by Hans Ulrich and Ute Ostrewalder.