Items related to Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Synopsis
Jason Taverner has a glittering TV career, millions of fans, great wealth and something close to eternal youth. He is one of a handful of brilliant, beautiful people, the product of top-secret government experiments forty years earlier. But suddenly, all records of him vanish. He becomes a man with no identity, in a police state where everyone us closely monitored. Can he ever be rich and famous again? Or was that life just an illusion?
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
Philip K Dick notoriously charted SF's most dangerous, booby-trapped realities. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) is a relatively straightforward tale of paranoid unease at finding the world isn't what it should be.
Jason Taverner is world-famous for his songs and regular TV show. "Thirty million people saw you zip up your fly tonight." "... It's my trademark." Although this future US is a grim police state with labour camps in Alaska and Canada, jetsetting Taverner enjoys being one of the winners.
Then he wakes up in a sleazy hotel room, still well-dressed and flush with money, but no longer the famous Jason Taverner. No ID--that's a forced-labour offence. His agent doesn't know him. Nor do his closest friends. He's even vanished from police databanks.
Forged documents are needed, hand-drawn by teenaged expert Kathy--one of Dick's most alarming women, a neurotic petty criminal who's also a police informer, who entraps and manipulates Taverner until he's terrified of her. He may deserve it: this self-obsessed megastar inflicts small, unthinking cruelties on virtually every woman he meets.
The title's policeman is another interesting character: Police General Felix Buckman, a mostly good man (and fan of Elizabethan songs: "Flow, my teares...") trapped in a horrible system. Is Taverner, the man with no past, a threat? Less so, maybe, than Buckman's amoral sister Alys, who takes special interest in Taverner and seems to have the world's only copies of his music albums...
Paranoid wrongness is expertly conveyed, and resolved with a typically offbeat SF notion. A sunny finale concludes one of Dick's most approachable novels.--David Langford
Review
One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem like navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac (Sunday Times)
Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise (Michael Moorcock)
One of the genuine visionaries that North American fiction has produced (LA Weekly)
For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first (Terry Gilliam)
The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world (John Brunner)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherLittlehampton Book Services Ltd
- Publication date1974
- ISBN 10 0575018801
- ISBN 13 9780575018808
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages240
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Search results for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Stock Image
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Published by
Victor Gollancz, London, 1974
ISBN 10: 0575018801
ISBN 13: 9780575018808
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Arapiles Mountain Books - Mount of Alex, Castlemaine, VIC, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hard Cover. Condition: G. Dust Jacket Condition: Laminated to Boards. First UK. 8vo. plain library boards, laminated with original dustwrapper (a little rubbed & bumped, slight leaf edge spotting, occ. RSMs, small labels etc to outer leaves only, upper hinge repaired, blurb from jacket flap tipped to FFE); pp. [viii (last blank)], 232 (last blank). A good reading copy of the uncommon first British edition. Seller Inventory # 030051
Quantity: 1 available
Seller Image
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Seller: Barclay Books, York, WA, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardback. "Dick skillfully explores the psychological ramifications of this nightmare." --The New York Times Review of Books Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said grapples with many of the themes Philip K. Dick is best known for--identity, altered reality, drug use, and dystopia--in a rollicking chase story that earned the novel the John W. Campbell Award and nominations for the Hugo and Nebula. Jason Taverner--world-famous talk show host and man-about-town--wakes up one day to find that no one knows who he is--including the vast databases of the totalitarian government. And in a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner has no choice but to go on the run with a host of shady characters, including crooked cops and dealers of alien drugs. But do they know more than they are letting on? And just how can a person's identity be erased overnight? 1974, First UK edition. A near fine copy only marked by very light tanning of the edges and endpapers and some old tape marks on the free endpapers. Otherwise a very crisp, fine copy. The d/w is unclipped and fine and now in a protective cover. Scans available if required. Seller Inventory # 25869329
Quantity: 1 available