Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

I just finished reading the late Philip K. Dick's novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Evidently written in the midst of the turmoil in America of the early 1970s with law-and-order and abuse-of-power president Richard Nixon and the political radicalization of college students across the nation, this novel takes that setting and extends it into the future. Into a world dominated by a repressive police state where a deceased Nixon is worshipped as a manifestation of Christ and students are imprisoned in ghettos across the land following a second Civil War.

Flow My Tears has as its protagonist a charismatic television idol, Jason Taverner, who is secretly a "six"; this is a person who was the product of genetic engineering in the past (of the "sixth" experimental group, that is). One day, Taverner wakes up to find that his existence has been wiped clean from the memories of all those he knew. As a matter of fact, there is no record of his life anywhere (remind you of a couple of Twilight Zone episodes?). And his lack of an identity places him in imminent danger of being arrested and sent off to a forced labor camp.

Not being someone who likes to spoil the endings of novels, I'll just say that the explanation for Jason Taverner's predicament was quite impressive, to say the least. As Philip K. Dick has done in other works of his that I have read, his characters are complex and interesting. The way they think and present themselves to each other reminds me a little of Ernest Hemingway's style. Dick's writing style also resembles Hemingway in its simplicity. All to his credit, in my opinion.

So get a copy of Philip K. Dick's short novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (I checked it out from my public library). It is a science fiction story of the best kind: one that shares some profound insights into how society and technology may merge in the future to create crushing oppression, as well as providing interesting angles on what is real and the nature of subjectivity.