SF Masterworks Group discussion

Jason Taverner is a Six, the product of top secret government experiments forty years earlier which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people. He is also a TV star, the prime-idol of millions...until, inexplicably, all record of him disappears from the data banks. Now he is a man with no identity, in a police state where everybody's records are monitored. Can he ever be rich and famous again...if, indeed, those memories are not illusions.

Finished reading this earlier, wonderful book and certainly on par with many of his more famous works. It did, however, get a bit confusing at the end.

Maybe that was just me though.

This story reminds me of a gag that Frankie Boyle made on 'Mock the Week.' He was talking about the amount of information that the UK government wanted to store on a new form of ID card they wanted to introduce. He was saying that the more information stored, the more information there was likely to be lost or to end up in the hands of the wrong people.

'Flow My Tears...' shows this in the extreme. If someone has access to your information, and indeed there is a vast quantity of information available then you could literally be erased from all existence. Quite a harrowing thought if you ask me.

i just read that a treatment for film is in the works. i didn't see any names - who'll do the adaptation, direct or star. film adaptations of his work tend to be pretty good, so here's hoping that holds true with Flow My Tears.

i saw a play of his book at the university of pittsburgh about 5 or 6 years ago. I was pretty cool.

Yes, certainly one of Dick's better novels. It is much more focused than some. I find him a variable writer: at times sheer genius, at others he seems muddled; confused and confusing.

"Flow my tears" I would recommend to anyone. It has a good plot and is philosophically very interesting (as, all Philip K Dick novels are).

Does anyone have an opinion on the number of Philip K Dick titles on the Masterworks list? Personally, I think a couple could have been taken out, but every Dick novel is at least imaginative and interesting.

For anyone who enjoyed this I'd recommend The Space Merchants as it follows the same riches to rags and back again story. I think I actually prefer it to Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.