Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
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He wakes up one day into a world where he is unknown - and without any existence in the records of the State. As an ex-celebrity ex-citizen, he has real problems.
Taverner's story is intertwined with those of Police General Felix Buckman, and his sister (and lover) Alys Buckman. Alys is a heavy user of reality-changing drugs, and the owner of the only Jason Taverner record in the new, altered, world.
The themes of celebrity, genetic enhancement, altered reality and drugs are interwoven with more homely themes to create a novel that works not only as science fiction, but also as literature.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said was awarded first prize in the John W. Campbell Awards for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1975.
Note: the title is a reference to Flow my tears a piece by the 16th century composer John Dowland, setting to music a poem by an anonymous author. The poem begins:
- Flow, my tears, fall from your springs,
- Exiled for ever, let me mourn
- Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
- There let me live forlorn.
References to Flow My Tears
Gary Numan, in his song "Listen to the Sirens" (from his band's self-titled debut album Tubeway Army), clearly makes a reference to the novel with the opening lyrics, "Flow my tears, the new police song".
Math-rock band Liars recorded a song called "Flow My Tears, The Spider Said", which is the last track on their album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.
The groundbreaking New Jersey grindcore group Discordance Axis base their song (from their second LP, Jouhou) of the same name on Dick's novel. These are the lyrics:
- Information certainly detained
- Paranoia near omniscient
- Updated files accessorize
- Flow my tears, the Policeman said
- Flow my tears along the platform track, narrow blind line
- Hostage management a formula for a new kind of lifeless life
- Assimilation seen through to an incomplete, a prototype, rote
- Infocentric timeline driven
- Ready? Die.
There is an extensive and in-depth discussion of the book near the end of Richard Linklater's Waking Life as well.
Reference
- Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, ISBN 067974066X
See also
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