Though humans take for granted many aspects of life, identity is arguably the most important of these overlooked fundamentals. For it is identity that grounds us in reality, the rock of self around which the oceans of our chaotic world crash and break. Without a solid grasp of who we are and what we stand for, we are anchorless in a world built on principles of consistency and logic. For some, this is a natural consequence of mental conditions like Schizophrenia, conditions that cause the human mind to distort reality. But what if identity is actively stripped from us? What if it is removed from the equation of human life? Do we become shiftless beings, not only unstuck in reality but cut out of the working machinery of the world around us? Flow My Tears The Policeman Said first asks the question and then sets out to provide an answer that is as nightmarish as it is compelling.
Originally published in 1974, this award-winning novel from Mr. Dick, best known for writing the short story upon which the movie Blade Runner was based, imagines the dystopian future of 1988 in which the United States, after convulsing its way through a second civil war, this one brought about as a result of the social revolution of the 1960s, has collapsed into a brutal, totalitarian police state. The Nats (national guardsmen) and the Pols (the police) comprise the government which is justifiably feared by a well-cowed citizenry distracted by the widespread availability of elicit sex and recreational drugs. The students who fought the police for control of the country's future have been thoroughly defeated, many captured and relocated to labor camps while the few that remain free scratch out a meager existence underground, away from the harsh lights of a relentless authority.
In this dark world of checkpoints and police brutality, of forced labor camps and sterilized minorities, life is livable for those who keep their heads down and avoid the notice of the authorities. One of the most successful of these is Jason Taverner, one of the world's most famous celebrities. The anchor of a variety program, he is regularly watched and adored by millions of rabid fans who assiduously ignore the fact that, in his fifth decade now, their hero is not only aging, his famous voice is failing. Carefully cloaked in the privilege of his powerful celebrity, Jason fears nothing, that is, until a late-night encounter with a woman scorned sends him to the hospital for treatment, where upon he wakes to find himself in a shabby hotel. Worse, while he still has his nice clothes and rich-man's cash, he seems to have entered a world in which Jason Taverner never existed, a world that has never known his smile, his voice, or his television program. His agents, lawyers, lovers and friends? All deny having ever heard of the world-famous Jason Taverner.
In one night, Jason has plunged from the heights of privilege into the depths of the underclass, that body of the unknown and forgotten people who so often find themselves ground beneath the heavy boots of the authorities. Will Jack recapture the heights he once knew, or will this world that never knew him be too unforgiving of a man who does not fit the proper pattern, this man who does not exist?
Flow My Tears The Policeman Said is thought provoking work which is as philosophical as it is mysterious. While exploring the nature of identity and love, celebrity and society, Mr. Dick is careful to hand out only clues to Taverner's ultimate fate, the nature of which hangs potently over the entirety of this charmingly dated novel. However, for all its stimulating virtues, it is not without flaws. Though all is made clear at the conclusion of the piece, the author's reveal has the feel of a cheat, falling back on strange pseudo science to justify a plot whose authenticity would have benefited from remaining mysterious. What's more, Mr. Dick, here, is hard on his main female characters, none of whom exhibit even glimmers of sanity or impulse control. Granted, Mr. Dick's male characters hardly fair much better, but the men have their motivations explained, their backgrounds fleshed out. The women, meanwhile, remain difficult and whiny caricatures who appear to be present in the story merely to provoke the men into self-revelation.
All this being true, Mr. Dick is nonetheless considered a master of science fiction because of works like these. He utilizes the tools provided to him by the genre, genetic engineering, futuristic technology, massive social change, etc., to build a platform for a provocative discussion about what grounds us in our society, what keeps us from slipping out of our place in the hierarchy that provides structure to our civilization. His conclusion, that this is almost entirely attributable to identity, as recognized by ourselves and by those around us, is as convincing as it is a gateway into a greater discussion about the way in which humans interact with their civilizations.
Sure, it's dated, presenting a world that possesses flying cars while still utilizing payphones, but we can forgive this. After all, for Mr. Dick, the backdrop seems to be nothing more than window dressing for the investigation of humanity that is the drama of the piece. (3/5 Stars)
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