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Sam is currently reading

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

by Philip K. Dick

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Sam said: " A superb scenario, as, in a frightening totalitarian world projected from 1970s America, a famous TV star awakes cover scanunknown, unrecognised and without ID records. Luckily he is a genetically modified six, which gives him high intelligence and g A superb scenario, as, in a frightening totalitarian world projected from 1970s America, a famous TV star awakes cover scanunknown, unrecognised and without ID records. Luckily he is a genetically modified six, which gives him high intelligence and great sex appeal. He will need these to survive along with a substantial dose of luck -- but by the end of the book you realise that most of it was perhaps not luck, even most of the stranger pieces of good fortune. For instance, why is he not killed early on? There turns out to be a reason. How he survives, the nature of the world he inhabits and what had happened to make him vanish from knowledge and records form the basis of the plot. It also turns out to involve some uneasy consideration of the nature of human relationships, particularly how people use each other. The plot is so well knitted together -- one of the best of Dick's plots in my opinion -- that it is hard to say much about what happens without ruining it for a reader. The plot device that resolves everything seems a bit weak, but maybe it didn't in 1974, when different views of the nature of reality were popular.

The main characters are all interesting and well depicted. The hero's feelings are convincing and he is kept believable by his character flaw that he is a calculating user of women. The totalitarian state seems to have emerged in the USA in response to a civil war between the radical student movement and the conservatives, won by the latter. The black population has been all but eliminated along the way. At the time when the novel is set, society is easing up somewhat.

Dick throws out ideas for the future here there and everywhere that a lesser writer would hoard for other books. Such is the strength of these ideas that it does not matter when we know 30 years on that they didn't happen that way. I could still accept them as 'might have beens' and of course alternative history is now a popular sub genre in its own right. Some of the technology projects the 1970s very clearly; personal flying machines, seed sized nuclear bombs, no whisper of the microchip and hardly even of the shrinking of transistors, so reel to reel tapes are still in common use. The paranoia and use of technology for social control resonates well with today.

The book remains one of the best novels by someone with a literally amazing imagination, which is rarer in SF than you might think. Inside the first leaf are listed all the books Dick wrote (which is a nice touch of this series, it must have been tempting to list SF Masterworks 1-45 instead) and I was pleased to see that I haven't read more than a quarter of them. As for the title, no the policeman doesn't actually say it, but he hears it, in a John Dowland pavan, and it fits. ...more "

Dec 18, 2025 02:26PM · see review

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We Can Build You

by Philip K. Dick

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Dec 14, 2025 05:41PM

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Firestarter

by Stephen King (Goodreads Author)

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Aug 20, 2025 04:58PM

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Sam’s Quotes

“...refusing to give in to his wretched stomach, which wanted to vomit up everything. He thought of the Excedrin in his pocket and decided to wait until his stomach had quieted a bit. No sense swallowing a painkiller if you were going to throw it right back up. Have to use your brain. The celebrated Jack Torrance brain. Aren't you the fellow who once was going to live by his wits? Jack Torrance, bestselling author. Jack Torrance, acclaimed playwright and winner of the New York Critics Circle Award. John Torrance, man of letters, esteemed thinker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize at seventy for his trenchant book of memoirs, My Life in the Twentieth Century. All any of that shit boiled down to was living by your wits. Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

1 likes

“We need a guy--a good, brave guy, a guy with no nerves, and balls the size of Cadillac hubcaps, a tough, smart, shrewd guy, a James Bond guy, but Russian--to get into the basement and stop this Klimov.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

tags: bravery, james-bond, nerveless, shrewdness, smartness, toughness

1 likes

“Here's a good one. God made man. Guns made man equal. Guns are the legacy of liberty.
Just because...just because our magazine doesn't feature a naked woman on the cover!
Hell, no, there's no naked women. The sickos would rather squeeze a trigger than a woman's breast. Guns are good old boys! They got them wham-whap two-fisted names, like...like Savage, Colt, Ruger, Baretta, Sigs, Winchester...
Springfield!
Browning!
Luger.
Smith & Wesson.
Remington Viper.
Glock. Don't forget Glock!
Markov, Walther!
H and K.
Mauser parabellum.
Anschutz.
Magnum! All sorts of mags.
I quit, you win. Mags are it.”
― Leon Uris, A God in Ruins: A Political Thriller About an Irish Catholic Presidential Candidate and an Explosive Secret from World War II

tags: gun, gun-manufacturer, gun-manufacturers, guns

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“You feel like you're the king of creation in an A-10. You're up front and the plane itself--wings, engines, rudders--is way back. You sit at the end of the long snout in a fishbowl wide and bright to the world and the only thing in your head-up display is a little rubbery smudge of nose. It's really just you, slung out there. That's why pilots like Leo Pell loved the ship; you really fly her, you're really airborne, on the wind. It's World War II stuff, Jugs and Bostons lowlevel over the hedgerows of occupied Europe.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

tags: a-10, a10, airborne, aircraft, pilot, wwii

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“So here it is. You punch in twelve numbers. No more, no less. To make it interesting, there's no limit on the integers between the hyphens. Thus the code may be twelve numbers long, or it may be twelve million; it just has to have eleven hyphens in it. And then you push Enter. If you are wrong, the machine will shout STRIKE ONE. If you are wrong again, the machine will shout STRIKE TWO. If you are wrong a third time, the machine will figure out that someone who doesn't know is trying to guess his way in, and it will shout ACCESS DENIED and arbitrarily assign twelve new numbers that only it knows and that only another computer can figure out in about 135 work hours.”
― Stephen Hunter, The Day Before Midnight

tags: access, codes, enter

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