Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Definition and Overview

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a Philip K. Dick novel in which Jason Taverner, who is a Six (a genetically improved superhuman) as well as a singer and television star, lives in a future American police state.

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 reference to Flow my tears refers to the 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.

Reference

• Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, ISBN 067974066X

See also

• The Man in the High Castle