Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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Second Variety" is in a post-apocalyptic aftermath where there's not much left on Earth but soldiers underground and killer robots, most of above-ground Earth having been blasted into ruins. Terraform: Often, usually not completely successful. In one story, Earth and Titan were in an uneasy peace because of a war that was held because humans terraformed Mars. There were already people of Titan on Mars, but they couldn't breathe oxygen. By the time the humans learned of the Titanians, the terraforming had already begun, and "you can't terraform just part of an atmosphere..." Being a super-popular but jaded tv celebrity, Jason is going to have a sardonic attitude about that. And he'll also be something of a fugitive; a pawn in the hands of (what else?) the police state. Things always tend to be much livelier in an alternate reality; kind of like a French farce, only deadlier. And eventually - here - much darker. Set in a dystopian future where the United States is ruled by a police state after a second civil war, and where students are hunted down and interred in forced labor camps, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said brings together many mainstay themes of PKD’s work. Deciphered, my novel tells a quite different story from the surface story (…). The real story is simply this: the return of Christ, now king rather than suffering servant. Judge rather than victim of unfair judgment. Everything is reversed. The core message of my novel, without my knowing it, was a warning to the powerful: You will shortly be judged and condemned. [7] [8] Adaptations [ edit ] Stage [ edit ]

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – A Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – A

Spiritual Successor: The Divine Invasion to VALIS. Valis appears in both books, the fictional film "Valis" exists in both, and they have similar Gnostic themes, but The Divine Invasion is not, strictly speaking, a sequel. Along the way we meet such characters as Kathy, the probably insane police informant / counterfeiter; the titular police general Felix who is in love with his wild, sexual, drug-abusing sister; and a fearful middle-aged spinster, maker of beautiful retail pottery that, as the final words of the book’s epilogue tells us, is probably loved. But the second half is tragic. He speaks in great detail about Flow My Tears and claims that some Spirit guided his hand as he wrote it. He notes parallels between events in the book and events that later happened in his life, and suggests a cosmic importance. He even draws a connection between a scene in the book (in which police general Felix has an emotional moment with a stranger at a gas station) and a scene in Acts (in which Paul meets a stranger on a road), claiming that it was “an obvious retelling” of that Biblical story.

This author's works provide examples of:

Well, I read both. It isn’t. No more than the daily horoscope – “Aspects of your life that you've neglected lately might haunt you on a day like today, Virgo” – is an obvious prophecy of my day.

Philip K. Dick (Creator) - TV Tropes Philip K. Dick (Creator) - TV Tropes

Evil Smells Bad: In The Divine Invasion, the protagonist finds a poor, lost, talking baby goat. He slowly becomes aware of a terrible stench surrounding it. It turns out the goat is actually the devil Belial. In "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" a group of men and women who escaped the nuclear war on Earth by fleeing into space return after years of absence and try to take over, much to the chagrin of the survivors who've built up their own lifestyle in the intervening years.

Replicant Snatching: "The Father-Thing". When an alien takes the place of the protagonist's father, he eats his insides, leaving only a dry, dead skin behind. But from the halfway point, I more or less read without stopping, as if moved by centrifugal force. There are the women — five major ones. Heather Hart hates people, loves Taverner — and what else? Ruth Rae is an emotionally burned-out sexpot; not much room for character work there, just dreariness in expensive gowns. Mary Anne is an artist, a nice girl whose image comes over well enough, but she is so plainly puppeted into position to make a point that it really doesn’t matter when she is smartly phased out, her bit part done.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - IMDb Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - IMDb

First published in 1974, this is a transitional work between his wild amphetamine fueled production of the sixties and his later theological works. Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Had a habit of mashing all sorts of sci-fi tropes together, even when they're superfluous to the "main" sci-fi conceit/narrative. For instance, "Flow My Tears," the Policeman Said has a random psychic cab driver, and The Man in the High Castle mentions off-world colonies despite being an alternate universe The '60s. Red Herring: In "The War Game", the protagonists think that the visible part of "Storming the Fortress" game from Ganymede (thought to plan a war against Earth) is just a cover for some more sinister aspect of the game. Turns out it is a red herring, but for a completely unrelated Ganymede game that is aimed at educating the children in the spirit of wilfully surrendering what belongs to them instead of fighting for it. Thus, the truth of the concluding “Lachrimae Verae,” which brushes off the melancholic luster of tears. The textures become more transparent. Decoration diminishes. Tones and harmonies take on a new purity. A fog of counterpoint is lifted. We see more clearly. Melancholy is not gone, that would be too much. The tear is Dowland’s money motif. But we see it, hear it, for what it is. Part of nature. Cloneopoly: The short story "War Game" features a Monopoly-like board game called Syndrome that is designed to mentally undermine the youth of a planet in the lead-up to an invasion. In what may be a reference to the way nobody ever plays Monopoly by the actual rules, the customs team tasked with inspecting the game to make sure it's safe to import fail to notice the psychological warfare aspects of the rules because they just glance over the rule sheet and go "Oh, it's just like Monopoly".PKD phrases the authenticity of humanity in terms of resistance to external threats, but I would suggest the greatest threats to reality come from within. It is our own venal, desperate, confused selves we must watch and resist. Alas, PKD’s resistance was not enough. For reasons too complex for any of us to know, he transformed from a man who was seeking reality to a man who believed he had found it. The ultimate dead end. This is only the second work I've read by PKD, following the terrific 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Not surprisingly, the two novels share a somewhat similar tone, but there are marked differences. Primarily, 'Flow...' - its somber title notwithstanding - has a potent, comic bite to it that I don't recall in 'Androids'. ~ not a wild ride of laughs, mind you, but a consistent cynical touch, displayed by a protagonist (Jason Taverner) who, early on, finds himself in a WTF-turnaround situation. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said would be a little left of center, over on the absurdist side of the continuum. La sofferenza è l’emozione più potente che un uomo o un bambino o un animale possono provare. È un sentimento buono”.