Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Written by Philip K. Dick

Narrated by Jefferson Mays

Winner of the John W. Campbell Award and a Hugo and Nebula award nominee, Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a rollicking chase story that combines altered reality, genetic enhancement, and drug use into a dystopian setting to create one of the most popular and enduring science fiction novels.

Jason Taverner—world-famous talk show host and man-about-town—wakes up one day to find that no one knows who he is—including the vast databases of the totalitarian government. And in a society where lack of identification is a crime, Taverner has no choice but to go on the run with a host of shady characters, including crooked cops and dealers of alien drugs. But do they know more than they are letting on? And just how can a person’s identity be erased overnight?

"Dick skillfully explores the psychological ramifications of this nightmare."—New York Times Review of Books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798894864112

Philip K. Dick

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Reviews for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

[rkosarko-360552 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If I had to describe the theme of the book as simply as possible, it's that this is Dick's exegesis on compassion. Love, affection, relationships, and what people mean to other people. This book doesn't get talked about as much as some of his others, probably because there was no major film adaption of it like with Androids, Minority Report, Scanner Darkly, and so on, but it's very much one of his best books. I consumed the whole thing in two days.

Don't expect to get a satisfying explanation of exactly what happened to protagonist Jason Taverner, but the specifics of how he left history and returned to it don't really matter, in the end.

Some of the themes in here feel oddly similar to a later-period Heinlein novel, but Dick handles those topics (mostly) better than Heinlein does.

[greeniezona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This isn't one of Dick's most talked about works (maybe because there is no adaptation (that I know of?)?), but it is one of the better written. I cannot talk about what I find most fascinating about this book without spoiling it COMPLETELY, but there is a lot that I can say.

Most of your common PKD themes are here. A sudden change or revelation that makes you question everything you knew about reality. A surveillance state. Disguise. But then we get some new or less common elements as well — a lot of shade thrown at eugenics, a staggering amount of sexual content for Dick Not that there is sex on the page, exactly, but the police encounter a pedophile (but in this world, the age of consent is 13 — it's messy), two of the female characters are bisexual, and there is an incestuous couple? I would almost think I was reading Heinlein, except there isn't a hot tub in sight.

Not to mention Heinlein is not interested in the question of WHAT EVEN IS REALITY/HUMANITY? Which is Dick's whole thing.

Out of everything, the anti-Black edge to eugenics is probably what ages the poorest, not because dick doesn't see it or mention it, but the treatment of it feels undercooked.

[soraxtm-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

better the second or third or whatever
time

[ikeman100 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I always enjoyed Dick's short stories but as I grow older I'm less impressed by his novels. This was an interesting premise but mostly a seedy space opera. There are a few more of his novels I will read but my expectations are now lower.

[kavinay-677830 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's a Wonderful Life [under Fascism]

[Armando1985 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Let's imagine having fame, fortune, and suddenly losing it all, realizing that you don't exist, there are no records of your life, no birth certificates; well, that’s what happens to Jason Taverner. And he must seek answers in a hostile world where the entire globe is subjugated by a totalitarian government, where the police are both judge and executioner.

The book is very good, although at certain moments it becomes a bit tedious, but overall it is very entertaining and complex, containing surprisingly current ideas, and if you like science fiction, it will captivate you. (Translated from Spanish)

[Edd62 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Exploring the aspects of the person, personality, but above all the importance of identity... the official, documents, represents in society, the existence of parallel universes, of which we are not aware, but can greatly influence our lives, the consumption of drugs. It affects our perception, but also the perception of others about us. Returning to the theme of genetic manipulation, pharmacological control, totalitarian states. And creating closed worlds, without heroes, without heroic actions based on ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not always objectively impacting society, but resonating in the mind of the reader. A very famous artist loses his identity and his identifications, is drawn into a police society and subjected to investigation. From here derive all the adventures that make "the police's tears flow." (Translated from Spanish)

[write5review · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Living in Parallel Worlds

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said published in 1974; Philip K. Dick began writing the novel in 1970. These, the late Sixties up to 1974, were turbulent times not only in the U.S., but also in Dick’s life. The Vietnam War raged on (would not end until April 1975), war protests student revolts continued, Watergate sculduggery and lying forced Nixon to resign ahead of impeachment (August 1974), and Dick’s personal life descended into turmoil: his marriage to third wife Nancy Hackett crashed in divorce, with her taking their child Isa; he began communal living with friends (reflected in A Scanner Darkly); and he began taking drugs heavily, including mescaline (featured in Flow My Tears). Previous to this, his life had taken a turn for the better during his time with Hackett. You might think of this as living two different lives, with the better of the two disappearing quickly, though by no means overnight. It’s this dichotomy of realities that constitutes the main theme of Flow My Tears, with reflections of the times clearly represented, both the reality and the feared.

It’s the future, as usual with Dick, the near future, 1988. This world itself is a different reality. A civil war has taken place and students carry on the resistance, barely subsisting in campus kibbutzim isolated by the police (pols) and National Guard (nats). A police state rules, led by a director, with marshals and generals under him. Authorities, employing a vast web of informants and surveillance devices, ferret out resisters, mostly students, and confine them in forced labor camps.

In this world reigns Jason Taverner, a widely liked television and recording celebrity, probably achieved by virtue of his “six” attributes, the result of discontinued genetic engineering that set him and a handful of physical and intellectual superiors above “ordinaries.” One day, after an argument with a former lover, she attacks him with an alien life form. He awakens in his world but as someone with no identity, devoid now of the status and fame of Jason Taverner. Without IDs, he can’t move about, so he pays a flophouse front desk man for help finding a documents forger. Kathy Nelson, very young, proves skillful, but also a government informant. Soon, Taverner ends up in the clutches of the L.A. Police Academy and subject to interrogation by police General Felix Buckman. As the police can find no past for him, they release him loaded with surveillance bugs and a pea-size nuke.

Alys Buckman, sister and incestuous lover of Felix, immediately scoops Taverner up and relieves him of the bugs and bomb. She’s wild and crazy, into drugs and unrestrained fetish sex. And she, unlike everybody else, knows who he is. She doses him with mescaline and he loses touch with reality. When he recovers, he discovers Alys dead, a yellowing skeleton. Turns out she took a new experimental reality-warping drug, later discontinued because of its deadly consequences.

Felix Buckman becomes frenzied with grief, and he and his henchman decide to pin Alys’ death on Buckman. Buckman, in flight, meets potterer Mary Anne Dominic, who after a while realizes she knows who Taverner is. He’s back, famous again. He hooks up with his old girlfriend, Heather Hart, who now recognizes him, only to be nabbed by the police and eventually put on trial for Alys’ murder. With skillful legal counsel, he’s acquitted. In an epilogue, readers learn of everyone’s fate over the ensuing years, decidedly peaceful, and the fact that the police state collapses. In the end, there’s but one word to describe things, made in reference to the beauty of a vase created by Dominic but, really, more universal in meaning, “love.”

[pgiunta_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Following an attack by a jilted lover, renowned TV variety show host and singer, Jason Taverner, awakens in a cheap motel and soon discovers that he is unknown to the world. Neither his current girlfriend nor his lawyer recognizes him when he calls. Further, all records of his identity have been erased from Earth’s databases.

Rather than panic, Taverner uses his genetically enhanced intellect and survival training to arrange for forged IDs in order to pass through the numerous checkpoints of the police state that developed in the U.S. since the Second Civil War. Otherwise, Taverner risks arrest and sentencing to one of the forced labor camps for the rest of his life.

While on the run, Taverner searches for answers only to become entangled with a host of characters ranging from the eccentric and harmless to the desperate and dangerous—until he is falsely accused of murdering the sister/wife of a Los Angeles police general.

It is easy to see why Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said earned Phil K. Dick the John W. Campbell award as well as nominations for a Hugo and Nebula. It’s a fast-paced story with a protagonist both capable and mysterious. Taverner is classified as a “Six”—presumably, a sixth generation genetically enhanced human (reminiscent of the Nexus 6 androids in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). As usual with Phil K. Dick, the antagonist in the story is not merely a single character, such as the unethical police general or his drug-dealing sibling/spouse. Rather, the enemy is the corrupt state, the totalitarian government, the decaying society.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said ranks as one of my top five favorite SF novels.

[questbird · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jason Taverner has everything and then he wakes up in a hotel room and nobody has ever heard of him. This is a science fiction about identity and mid-life crisis, Taverner seeks out various females to help him regain his former life: a psychotic young forger; and a former lover now with the wisdom of the older woman. Finally he plays mind games with the chief of police and his demented sister.

[xiaomarlo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This review is a lot about Philip K. Dick in general, JSYK.

I feel like I didn't get the right introduction to PKD when I was younger. Probably a lot of people don't. You watch Blade Runner and then decide you'd like to read the book, which is totally not like an 80's violent cyberpunk flick at all. The book is very, very different from the film.

Next, I was recommended The Man in the High Castle, which should be recommended to people with caveats. But I suppose most of sci-fi fandom reads from a position of white male privilege, and makes that assumption of everyone else when they say it's a classic masterpiece. Certainly racial relations and ideology have changed a lot in 40 years, and nobody could get away now with writing about race in the way he did. So for instance, in this book, a minor part about the police state they live in is that black people are becoming extinct because they were sterilized by the government. But it's just sort of said as an aside. You simply cannot get away with anything like this today (and that's a good thing!).

So for a long time I did not like Philip K Dick. Because nobody bothered to say that The Man in the High Castle is really great despite its extremely dated racial insensitivity (to put it mildly). In some ways it's hard to excuse him when he has contemporaries like Ursula Le Guin. But then, not everyone has the impeccable spot-on politics of UKLG, which is why she's my favourite author.

Having now read A Scanner Darkly and being about 3/4 of the way through this one, I can see that he definitely brings some fascinating ideas about drugs, reality, identity, and subjectivity to the table. I'm learning to appreciate the good that he does. But I could've learned a lot sooner, if people would simply acknowledge his shortcomings. A lot of people seem to take white male libertarianism as a given in sci-fi. And they definitely should not.

.............

I finished the book last night. I really liked the ending. I liked KR-3, Mary Ann, Buckman, and the epilogue (the gun got a paragraph of its own, which made me laugh). Fascinating ideas in this book. In the middle it kind of meandered, but the ending was so good. Definitely worth a read. I can totally see how William Gibson and David Lynch (especially in Mulholland Drive, my favourite movie) were both inspired by PKD.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It has been two months since I last finished a novel. Two months chasing images, reading about Godard and Kurosawa. This marks my entry into PKD. I see Alphaville and Dodes’ka-den as being supplemental texts. Ostensibly Flow My Tears is about celebrity and drugs. Neither is explored in a vacuum but rather as symbols of liberty in a repressive system.

David mentioned that Dhalgren despite its flaws had not left his memory months after reading it. Delany’s rumination certainly bubbles in this excursion from PKD. Not sure of any interaction between Delany and Dick; I’m actually not sure I want to know.

The synopsis is simple—uber famous singer/chat show host wakes in an Orwellian reality where no one knows him nor is there any record of his existence. The membranes of reality are explored and many damaged souls take the stage. The conclusion is satisfyingly bleak.

[michaeladams1979 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A strong and moving novel about a man ripped from his everyday reality. Jason Taverner continues to exist, but his past has been erased. No ID cards, no place to call, no friend or lover who remembers him. All this in a strange alternate history where a second civil war has been fought and the police have a powerful and terrifying presence. The threat of being sent to a forced labor camp looms largely throughout the book as a metaphor for prison and the loss of freedom that frivolous laws can represent. It‰Ûªs very telling the greatest enemy the police have are radicalized students who seem to dwell beneath fortified college campuses. As a whole I felt the story was excellent, but I have to admit the way the ending was handled mostly as epilogue was a bit disappointing and rushed. We had lived in Taverner‰Ûªs skin for so long, going where he went, feeling what he felt, that the synopsis-style final chapter left me feeling a bit cheated, but still overall I‰Ûªd still call this a 4 or even 4.5 star book.

[DiegoFleitas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent. I wish the author could enjoy today the use that is made of his work. A visionary. (Translated from Spanish)

[m_mozeleski · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An interesting story about the mutability, or immutability, of human nature. Worth a read.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As usual, PKD knocked my socks off. It's amazing to realize how very long ago this was written, and yet it seems timely, and timeless, all at once. The only startling note in the whole book was the mention of "Darvon" as a painkiller. It's a great read, from beginning to end, and I had almost forgotten what a rich vocabulary PKD had, and how quickly he could draw you in.

[electrascaife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This one feels like it's in the same world at A Scanner Darkly (Is it meant to be? I should look that up...), and that's a good thing, as I enjoyed both of them quite a bit. Certainly not a happy read, either one, but well written and cleverly done.

[big_bang_gorilla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book has the greatest title of all time, and its premise is promising enough, but on the whole I didn't find it compelling reading. The book posits that America's most popular television personality finds that all recognition of him has disappeared overnight. He encounters many armchair ontologists who attribute this variously to him either being delusional or under the influence of narcotics either before or after this transformation. And then he finds that the police have become interested in him, for reasons which were never clear to me, though perhaps that's the point. The author's reveal, fueled by a load of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, was lost on me, but the basic misfire here is that the antagonist is more interesting and likable than the protagonist, and the stream of minor characters, mostly female, who drop in along the way for a chapter or two, are more interesting by far than either. Add in that the book is set in the far future of 1988 and that Dick's attempt at futuristic dialogue struck me as sounding a lot like Saturday Night Live's "Wild and Crazy Guys" of the seventies, and for me, the problems swamped the book's undoubted merits.

[ufkls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bücher von Phil zu lesen bedeutet jedesmal fast den Verstand zu verlieren.

[crazymamie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked up Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which was calling to me from the bedroom bookcase. And I am so glad I did - very good. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep still remains my favorite, but this was a very enjoyable ride. I like how just when you think you might know where Dick is going, he takes you in a completely different direction. His stuff his clever and innovative and edgy. And it holds up - this was written in 1970. A futuristic dystopian that could be written today. I like the kind of nebulous reality that Dick brings to all of his stories - there is clear definition in some parts while others remain just out of our grasp. Recommended if you like his writing. If you have not read anything by him, I would not start here - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would make an excellent entry, or try some of his short stories to get a feel for whether or not he is for you.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled forever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.

In “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said”, taken from “Flow My Tears” by John Dowland


This is one of the books that changed me in ways I’m still trying to come to terms with, and I’ve read it more than 30 years ago. At the time I lacked the tools to properly tackle this. That’s why I’ve been wanting to re-read it and analyse it in the light what I currently know. I still remember the feeling I had the first time I read it back in the day. Mind-boggling to say the least. 30 years later, can I define what reality is? Doesn’t reality belong to the subjective objectivity realm, i.e., isn’t it the highest degree of objectivity possible for a human being? Reality can only be a subjective objectivity as it falls back on whether I chose to accept it as the truth or deny it completely. This means objective reality does exist, but I can only perceive it with my own perception filters. I have to decide what is reality as best I can, and may choose to assert some prepositions even though everyone else denies it (Copernicus comes to mind). It’s to my advantage to seek to make my perception filters as little distorting as possible, but I doubt I could ever achieve that completely, because I’m the product of my own culture to start with, to say the least. This leads me to the question whether uncertainty in reality is a psychological phenomenon. Does it exist only in the mind, and not in the world? We’re dangerously delving into the quantum universe continuum…Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, dudes who I think knew what they talking about. At the time I knew zilch about these matters. Now I only know little bit more. Now I know reality does not exist until it’s measured. Regardless of that, I firmly believe in the fact that asymptotic convergence theorems are meaningful. Even in the realm of quantum physics, I believe that through asymptotic convergence I can get very meaningful on some states of information, but that state of information is sometimes not maximal, i.e., deterministic for observables. When the best I can do is some probabilistic function over observables, it's because I've left out essential details, not because the observables are random. That’s the nature of the quantum world for you. Quantum mechanics tells me I only perceive at most a tiny sliver of reality. The rest is just fuzzy stuff…The direct consequence of this is that the world of our perception is just a projection of a fantastical high dimensional space continuum. The space of all those space continuums has its existence and properties quite independent from our observations, i.e., from the “objective” reality as perceived by us. But once again, this n-dimensional space is unavailable to us — we can only see the ripple effects it has within our much smaller 3-dimensional space.

One of my plans for 2017 is to re-read some of my old-time favourites, being Phil Dick one of them. As I was reading “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” I kept thinking and trying to pinpoint what makes Phil Dick the writer he was. A hasty analysis tells me he had a peculiar way of delivering information (what some of us call “the act of writing” …). Dick usually set up an ecosystem that seems pretty much ordinary, except for a few tiny, bitsy details that on first reading go unnoticed (e.g., remember the electric animals in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”); everything else about the universe created and depicted is relatively unchanged. This way of keeping things down-to-earth except for a few changes creates a bounded sense of realism in his writing; this is a very smart way to tell me not dismiss anything unusual. He uses this approach of make-believe realism to uproot his own philosophies on a subject into my head. What he does is he gives the main character a common frame-of-reference on something, and utilizes the other characters to change the main character’s frame-of-reference to what the minor characters are thinking. He does this with Taverner in “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said” regarding love. Pretty smart for a SF writer, don’t you think? Many Mundane Fiction writers are incapable of doing this successfully.

Coming to the theme of what reality is. Reality is being able to find beauty in Andreas Scholl singing several John Dowload ayres, particularly “Flow my Tears” while reading this novel.

[drardavis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having also read Dick’s Exegesis this story made a bit more sense than it might have otherwise. As the main character, Jason Taverner, admits near the end, he was “living in a world made of rubber. Everything bounced. Changed shape as soon as it was touched or even looked at.” But just when you agree that it was all a paranoid dream, Dick comes at you with an explanation. Of course, the explanation starts off sounding reasonable, blending drugs, neuroscience, the physics of alternate realities, and more until the explanation gives you and the “policeman” a headache. But if you really can’t make sense of it all, just enjoy the passing of the scenes. I especially liked the wall-to-wall carpet depicting “Richard M. Nixon’s final ascent into heaven amid joyous singing above and wails of misery below.”

[darushawehm-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Four to five stars for great ideas and beautiful unironic emotion. Two to three stars for really clunky writing and weaving storytelling.

[weird_o · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

P. K. D.'s Flow My Tears Said the Policeman is a decent page-turner, but not completely satisfying. The book was written in the mid-70's, but set in 1988, so it's "in the future." The central figure is a celeb who wakes up in a flea-bag hotel, a big wad of cash in his pocket, but no ID. And he quickly discovers that NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS. And of course, he's living in a police-state kind of society where ID of multiple types is essential. But there are NO files on him anywhere in the whole world, not even in the colonies on the Moon. That of course makes him a subject of interest to the authorities, who want to know how he expunged the international data banks of his personal data. It's not spoiling anything to say that it all works out in the end. Pretty much.

I get a kick out of the mix of technological forecasting that's stirred into such stories. In this depiction of 1988, people travel around in vehicles called "quibbles" that fly, taking off and landing vertically. There seem to be traffic lanes in the sky, but no traffic controllers. There seem to be streets, and people park their quibbles at the curb. Taxis are robotic quibbles, and once at your destination, you can't exit ('cause the door won't open) until you pay up.

The authorities have endless data bases, digital dossiers on ev...er...y...body, that can be accessed quicktime. The phones have video-screens so you can see who you are talking to. They've got microdot tracking devices that can be hidden in a person's clothing, and even supremely miniaturized nuclear bombs (called "seeds") that can be implanted under your skin and triggered remotely if you...uh...you know...drift out of line.

All this BUT, vinyl discs are state-of-the-art for recorded music. All the phones are linked by wires. Wanna call your buddy? Get out some coin and find a pay phone. The computer mavens still depend on punch cards.

[xuebi-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Once more Philip Dick delivers an intriguing and often confusing novel concerning the nature of identity.

Set in a dystopian police-state America, a genetically-enhanced actor wakes up one day and finds out he never existed. What happens next is an exploration of this nightmarish scenario though the twist ending is somewhat controversial.

[sebastianhagelstein · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jason Taverner is a popular television personality and singer who loses his identity and suddenly experiences the underbelly of the oppressive society he lives in.

The ending has a real science fiction twist and takes you by surprise.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good. Love PKD, yet haven't read all that much (Palmer Eldritch is the only other one I can think of). Will have to read more. Philosophy and character studies disguised as science fiction. No one like him.

[parthurbook · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Anything by Dick carries the enormous weight of his reputation with it - visionary, philosopher, maverick, shaman. Added to which, this novel about identity, policing and perception has the most suggestive of titles. Unfortunately whille there's much to admire in the simplicity of Dick's writing, it's a rather empty affair that left me somewhat undernourished after a week's reading. For completists only.

[sylak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good science fiction sends your mind racing off in many directions all at once and at differing speeds. You'll be focused on an immediate situation involving you questioning your own morality, or accepting a hitherto alien concept, whilst your mind quietly unravels a theme that was presented to you in a previous chapter. Flow My Tears, the Policeman said is just such a story.

I had absolutely no idea what to expect before reading it except that I was following a good recommendation; and as it turned out it worked out for the best. I found myself totally immersed in the plot. At times it felt to me like reading parts of William F. Nolan's 'Logan's Run' and Dick's 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale' in others.

Some of the chapters gave me a lot to think about such as chapter eleven when Ruth Rae discusses her feelings of grief and loss with Jason Taverner. Little things like that sit in the back of your mind as other things overlap to form a rich cocktail of flavours that make this for me a deeply satisfying novel.

As you can see, I've chosen not to give anything away concerning the actual story; so, please do enjoy.

[pondlife_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is quite a good novel, but not one of PKD's best.

The main problem for me was that the ending just seemed too far fetched. Drugs often feature in PKD novels, and parallel dimentions or alternative realities are common SF concepts, but the was these two things were combined just didn't seem at all convincing to me. In fact, it felt like a deus ex machina.

Perhaps I missed something, but the epilogue seemed totally unnecessary: it didn't really add anything to the story.

Currently, I rate Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, and Ubik higher than Flow My Tears.