Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author(s)	Philip K. Dick
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	1974
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	231 pp
ISBN	0-783-89583-6
OCLC Number	47650715

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick about a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who loses his identity overnight. The story is set in a futuristic dystopia, where America has become a police state after a Second Civil War. The novel was awarded first prize in the John W. Campbell Awards for the best science fiction novel of the year in 1975. It was also nominated for a Nebula Award in 1974 and a Hugo Award in 1975.

Plot summary

The novel is set in a dystopian future United States which is entering a post-totalitarian era with prospects of future democratic reform. Set in a then-future 1988, it extrapolates events from the late sixties and early seventies. These culminated in a "Second Civil War", also called the "Insurrection", which led to the collapse of democratic institutions in the United States and elsewhere. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") re-established social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals and generals as operational commanders in the field. Compulsory sterilization of African Americans has sharply reduced their population, and, after the laws for sterilization were eventually reversed, increased their social status to the point where even verbally harassing someone of colour is considered to be a major crime. By comparison, radicalised former university students eke out a desperate existence in subterranean kibbutz communes. However, there appear to be no social barriers to the use of recreational drugs in this future, nor are some forms of paedophilia a crime.

After his former lover throws a Callisto-based parasitic lifeform at him, celebrity entertainer Jason Taverner wakes up to find himself to be completely unknown to the outside world. He has no identification, there is no record of him in the extensive databases of the police government, and neither his friends nor his former fans have any memory of him. As an ex-celebrity and an ex-citizen, he has real problems. These are exacerbated for him as a "Six", a highly rated stratum of covert genetic engineering of humans that apparently began in the 1940s (although why this occurred and who instigated the process is left unclear).

Taverner's story is intertwined with those of Police General Felix Buckman and his hypersexual sister Alys Buckman, who has an incestuous relationship with her brother, but otherwise seems to be a lesbian. They have a son born of their union, Barney. After police surveillance detects Taverner's lack of identification, Felix interrogates him, but then is forced to let him go, whereupon Alys invites him to stay at her apartment.

Alys is a heavy user of recreational drugs, including KR-3, a new reality warping drug secretly being developed in police labs and tested on forced-labor inmates. Initially, she also appears to be the only person left who recognizes Jason Taverner. However, the drug has a devastating metabolic side effect in that overdose causes rapid decay. After Jason takes mescaline himself, he is horrified to find Alys' skeleton and leaves her home, before meeting Mary Ann Dominic, a potter. As they discuss his recent experiences in a cafe, Taverner's existence returns to normal as the effects of the KR-3 that Alys took finally wear off posthumously.

Felix discovers that Alys had a lesbian affair with Heather Hart, another elite "Six" (and one of Jason's ex-lovers). It is revealed that Alys set the whole plot in motion. By using KR-3 her mind became "unbound" from her own reality, allowing her to imagine a new "irreal" world where she knew Taverner personally. But the drug brought him over too, taking him from his own reality so she could perceive and interact with him in an adjacent world, one where Jason Taverner had never existed before. She fixated on Taverner due to her appreciation of his musical talent.

Jason surrenders himself to the police, so that he can be cleared of Alys' death, which duly occurs. Heartbroken, Felix then travels to the countryside to mourn the loss of his sister and lover.

In an epilogue, the final fates of the prior characters are disclosed. Felix Buckman retires to Borneo where he is assassinated for writing an exposé of the global police apparatus. His son Barney becomes a police officer as well, but is invalided out of the service, and becomes an antiques collector. Jason Taverner dies of old age after a lifetime of hedonism, while Heather Hart abandons her celebrity career, and becomes a recluse. Mary Anne Dominic's pottery wins an international award and her works become of great value while she lives into her eighties. KR-3 test trials continued in secret for a few years but are deemed too destructive and the project is scrapped. Ultimately, the revolutionary students give up and voluntarily enter forced-labor camps. The detention camps later dwindle away and close down, the police-state government no longer poses a threat, and police marshals are abolished in 2136 CE.

The themes of celebrity, genetic enhancement, altered reality, and drugs are interwoven with discussion of the value of love and the meaning of identity.

Reception

New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas praised the novel, saying that "Dick skillfully explores the psychological ramifications of this nightmare," but concludes that the story's concluding unconvincing rationalization of its events is "an artistic miscalculation [and] a major flaw in an otherwise superb novel."

Title

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 (possibly Dowland himself). 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.

Author's interpretation

In his article 'How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later', Dick recounts how in describing an incident at the end of the book (end of chapter 27) to an Episcopalian priest, the priest noted its striking similarity to a scene in the Books of Acts in the Bible. In Dick's book, the police chief, Felix Buckman, meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, with whom he uncharacteristically makes an emotional connection. First of all he hands the stranger a drawing of a heart pierced by an arrow. He then flies away, but quickly returns and hugs the stranger, after which they strike up a friendly conversation. In the Book of Acts (chapter 8), the disciple Philip meets an Ethiopian eunuch (i.e. a black man) sitting in a chariot to whom he explains a passage from the Book of Isaiah, and then converts him to Christianity.

Dick further notes that a few months after writing the book, he himself uncharacteristically came to the aid of a black stranger who had run out of gas. After giving the man some money and then driving away, he returned to help the man reach a gas station. Dick was then struck by the similarity between this incident and that described in his book (approaching a black stranger, and returning again).

Adaptations

Stage

Mabou Mines presented the world premiere of their adaptation of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said at the Boston Shakespeare Theatre from June 18–30, 1985. The play received mixed reviews and a lot of attention from the Boston media. Linda Hartinian, a personal friend of Dick's, adapted the novel to the stage and designed the set (she also played Mary Ann Dominic, and read Dick's 1981 "Tagore Letter" at the end of the play).

The Boston Phoenix quotes Hartinian on the subject in an interview before the play opened: "He was someone I admired and looked up to, and I knew he had always wanted one of his works to be adapted. One day when I came to visit him he jumped up and grabbed this manuscript and said 'I want to give you something, but I don't have anything, so I'm going to give you this manuscript, and someday its gonna be worth a lot of money.'" The Phoenix continues, "It was a draft of Flow My Tears, and as Hartinian discovered when she sat down to adapt the book, it contained many passages that had been cut from the published text, including a discussion of ways to remember deceased writers that was to prove prescient. Naturally Hartinian based her script on her private edition."

The play was directed by Bill Raymond, Hartinian's husband. "It was in response to Linda's loss that we chose Tears," he told the Phoenix, "because Flow My Tears is in fact a novel about grief, and not necessarily just about loss of identity." The play has been performed by Mabou Mines in Boston and New York and by the Prop Theatre in Chicago. It was published by the Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois, which also leases stock and amateur acting rights to the play.

Film

On February 1, 2004, Variety announced that Utopia Pictures & Television had acquired the rights to produce three of Philip K. Dick's works: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth.

In May 2009, The Halcyon Company, known for developing the Terminator franchise, announced that after Terminator Salvation, they will next adapt Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Halcyon acquired the first-look rights to the works of Philip K. Dick in 2007.

Publication information

• Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, ISBN 0-679-74066-X

External links

• Summary at official PKD website
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said cover art gallery
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said reviewed at The Open Critic
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said reviewed at The SF Site
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said at Worlds Without End