Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“Fear can make you do the wrong thing more than hate or jealousy. If you're afraid, you don't commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back.”

Flow My Tears... is one of those alternate history/dystopia types of sci-fi novels. I do love reading Philip K. Dick. The writing is easy and relatable but the happenings are so delightfully weird and engrossing.

This world is a police state where your ID and proof of occupation are needed just to be allowed on the street. Other than the fascism, emotional detachment and inability to love are among the problems characters face. They inhabit a world of sex, drugs, and obsession with youth. (Okay, maybe that's not so different from our world.) Our protagonist Jason is a genetically engineered singer and television star who personifies these fixations.

He is attacked by a jilted lover and when he wakes up all proof of his existence, not to mention his incredible fame, is wiped out; everyone that knew him no longer remembers him. (As in his Twitter account vanished.) A cold, self-centered and pleasure-seeking individual who is used to luxury and ease, he now has to beg others for help. His good looks allow him to rely on women, but women that are outside of his former social sphere whom he never would have had anything to do with.

A couple of moments that stood out for me were when other characters had to explain love to him. His old flame Ruth tells him that love is caring for someone beyond your own survival; when that someone dies or leaves you grieve. Jason chooses to believe it would be better not to love like that.

Felix Buckman, the policeman of the title and Jason's nemesis, explains that when you love a child your love for them never changes, even after death or divorce you never lose that love. Again, Jason is relieved not to have this in his life.

There were only two things that kept me from a full five star review. One was the explanation for Jason's sudden “non-existence.” Sometimes these plot devices don't really matter, only the conflict they create. But if Dick is going to bother to write one, this one didn't sit right with me. I'm not going to spoil it, but it wasn't anything I could twist in my mind as making any sense.

The other thing that bothered me was the climatic emotional moment of the book belonged to Felix, not Jason. Felix has the breakdown and reaches out to another human. It's puzzling that Dick sets up Jason as the one that needs to come to this moment of crisis, but then gives it to Felix.