I finished this book earlier this week: a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is 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. (Wikipedia).
The drug-induced alternate-reality explanation for Jason Taverner's identity loss was, for me, convoluted and unsatisfactory. However, the novel is quite poignant in its meditation on love through the experiences of Police General Buckman. Dick also does a nice job of creating a unique dystopia, as always, but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Man In the High Castle do it better.
read it a few years ago on your recommendation. don't remember it well, but there's was something about it that did it for me. remind me -- who is the police general again?
ReplyDeletePolice general buckman is the guy who keeps bringing Taverner in for questioning - he lives with his sister, who he has a child and a strange incestuous relationship with, and she dies from a drug overdose while she's with Taverner.
ReplyDeleteSometime for Xmas or something I would love a collection of DAW paperback cover illustrations. Can I get an amen for the fact that this publisher consistently had the most fantastic cover art in the 60s & 70s?
ReplyDeleteamen brother.
ReplyDeleteamen. i think.
ReplyDelete