Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Flow My Tears, for me, is wonderfully dated classic science fiction that incorporates what has now become a bizarre mix of still-futuristic and old-fashioned ideas. Set in the then future of 1988, people drive flying cars and live in hovering apartments, but listen to LP records and have to run to find public payphones. Dick's totalitarian state is cleverly evoked to be a menacing presence surrounding our talk show host hero and I loved that its powerful face is actually backed by inept bureaucracy. Dick has a great descriptive turn of phrase and I could easily picture the decrepit forger's lab, the clinical police academy, luxury apartments and the Buckman's museum-cluttered home.

Once we come to the characters, I am less rapturous though. For someone supposedly genetically engineered to ooze charm, I found Jason Taverner surprisingly unlikeable. The female characters are pretty well defined, especially Alys and Mary Anne, and McNulty was real to me too. I did struggle to understand the point of many of the longer rambling conversations though, particularly those where characters veered off into deep philosophical exchanges seemingly within minutes of meeting each other. There is a lot of repetition of basic facts too although, annoyingly, not when it really would have been helpful such as in explaining just what was going on! I thought I was successfully staying with the mad reality hops and even had a couple of good theories, but then the coroner started his explanation which caused my brain to overheat and quietly melt away!

I was less impressed than I had hoped I would be with Philip K Dick. I liked the scene-setting and overall idea of a famous man cast adrift as a nonentity, but there were several occasions when I felt as though I had missed his point somewhere down the line. Perhaps I should have chosen an earlier of his titles as a starter?