Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, a feast for the eyes, with flying quibbles as air-bound VW bugs, cloned movie stars, free-thinking, erudite cops (but nonetheless corrupt), & drug overdoses so severe that that the victim is reduced to charred skeleton remains. The ID checkpoints are chilly reminders that this is a thawing totalitarian state where the government police have complete records on every living person. One exception is Jason Taverner, who has been mysteriously de-identified from the data banks of this 1988 U.S. The characters that Taverner comes across in this science fiction novel are interesting, to say the least. He picks up Ruth Rae in a Las Vegas nightclub and gets involved with her, even to the point the police can trace him to her luxury condo because of an electronic bug that is on his body. Ruth Rae`s main personality traits are that she`s a lush, a sex pot, and a gold-digger. In the epilogue PKD reveals that she had married 52 times and dies of an alcohol/drug overdose. Like Alys Buckman she too had used the phone-grid sex network, a futuristic kicks addiction that has permanent metabolic side effects . Alys Buckman herself, an important pivotal character in the plot, was exceedingly eccentric. She was an expert on S & M art and her collection was committed to a museum of popular culture. If this book is ever made into a movie, the wardrobe people can do much with her costumes giving her tight black paten leather pants and metal chains, blue eyeliner and long wavy hair with a dark tan! Alys is not really evil, but she has the key to much valuable information that she uses to her advantage. Her undoing is drug addiction to KR-3, a concoction even stronger than heroin or crack cocaine.
The break in of PKD`s apartment in November 1971 is of much interest for the color it lends to PKD`s writing. Theories are provided in the 1975 article in Rolling Stone by Paul Williams. I believe I had this Stone at the time because I remember the cover with Rod Stewart. Lawrence Sutin discusses these theories in his PKD biography: “Divine Invasions-A Life Of Philip K. Dick.” He suggests the plausibility that PKD actually did it himself, but I am not inclined to believe this. There were many strung-out hang-abouts that could have easily done it. The documentary (the title escapes me at the moment, but it`s really cool...) hints that there may have been heroin in the file cabinets and this would provide an ideal motive for a bunch of junkies to snag-up some horse. The theories that it was the CIA or the Black Panthers are fairly far-fetched, but it was, after all, the Watergate era. Sutin does not rule out that it was an illegal search and seizure by the local San Rafael police. To say the least, this mishap haunted PKD for the remainder of his days and fueled his paranoia more, if that is even possible. He did clean up his act though and managed to write “A Scanner Darkly” without the crutch of amphetamines. Aspects of the break-in may be detected in some of his last novels such as Scanner. It may be in “Flow My Tears…”. But I couldn`t give you an exact citation. When they bust him in Ruth Rae`s condo though, & had traced him with the electronic bug, a Watergate chill came over me, ala the Democratic Headquarter burglers!
The character of Felix Buckman is perhaps the most important in this SF novel. In the epilogue he apparently penned an authoritative manual entitled: “The Law and Order Mentality”, that chronicles an efficient planet-wide police bureaucracy that functions properly and keeps society in order. He is somewhat more tolerant than some police marshals and in the day eased some of the restraints on the inmates of forced labor camps. Tensions are easing somewhat as the U.S. society comes out of the Second Civil War, but the students are still on the lam. These seems to reflect the freeing up of tensions in the U.S. when the Sixties became the Seventies and the Vietnam War ever gradually... wound down and people morphed to a ‘pleasure principle’ life style philosophy, as relief from the all-consuming war. Theories can abound as reasons for Jason Taverner`s sudden lost identity, but it seems to be tied-in with an occult drug called KR-3 and mind control can be induced by its use. But gee wiz, the side effects are too harsh-turning into a smoking skeleton is a little over-the-top, if you ask me!
An interesting little approach to the SF novel would be to dig up some of the items of technology and of popular culture. For instance, what did the quibbles look like? How did they operate? What did the juke box look like when Jason Taverner and Mary Anne Dominic were conversing in that quasi-greezy spoon? And what did some of Taverner`s records sound like, such as Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues or his hit single, 'Nowhere Nothun` Fuck-Up'? Did it sound like Iggy Pop in the late seventies? ...Probably not...I thought that Bladerunner did a good job of visualizing PKD`s zany, futuristic world, but I`d like to see this one with more of a 70s disco sheen in a SF wrapper, of course! I envision much of this to look like the art work on a 70s juke box or say a pinball machine, or a semi-truck mud flap with a curvaceous dame; as much retro as futuristic panorama! And can you imagine what Ruth Rae would look like? If you had been married 52 times you might look rather disheveled, like Linda Blair in the Exorcist! Boy am I glad I never took KR-3, but would like to watch the experience remotely as a simulation of some sort!
PKD plays with a number of intriguing ideas in Flow My Tears..., & being an idea man by nature, he spoofs his current culture & packages his U.S.A. of 1988 with the foibles of a 1970 U.S. The youth movement is squashed, but the police apparatus flourishes and grows, due in part to the wisdom of Felix Buckman, a sort of Erasmus of the cop culture. Another theme is that dispite the totalitarian presence of Big Brother, society at large is loose & inundated with drug use and free living. Buckman himself practices incest with his own sister Alys Buckman, who is a shadowy figure that leads a hedonistic life and beyond. Technology florishes but the oil companies are nationalized like in Mexico or Venezuela. Radicals, intellectuals and minorities have either eliminated or parked in forced labor camps to rot. Felix Buckman himself is an architect of these camps and favors a more tolerant approach, believe it or not. The police control the data banks and thus can keep a tight control over the people. This gave me a creepy sensation with I thought of the new found authority of Homeland Security, a new institution whose reach is just now being defined. PKD would shutter at the thought of this new age of electronic surveillance.
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