We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
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We Can Remember It for You Wholesale is a short story by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a classic Dick meshing of reality, false memory and real memory.
Douglas Quail, a simple and ordinary man, wishes to visit Mars. Unable to afford it he visits a company, Rekal, that offers implanted memories ("extra-factual memory"). The attempt to implant some racy Mars memories of Quail as a secret agent reveals that Quail actually is an undercover government assassin with a mind full of dangerous secrets. The Rekal staff quickly get Quail out of there; he heads home and finds certain physical evidence to support his new old memories. The government initially seeks his death but instead Quail manages to make a deal. He returns to Rekal to have his Mars memories once more suppressed, and is offered by way of compensation a set of heroic wish-fulfillment false memories. The Rekal staff begin the memory-implanting procedure — and uncover a different and older set of suppressed memories revealing that the unbelievable memories they are about to insert are already there and are true.
The plot was the inspiration for the 1990 science fiction film Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the film the hero, renamed Quaid, actually travels to Mars, but the initial memory implant scene foreshadows much of what he achieves — kills the bad guys, gets the girl, saves the planet. Nor — as director Paul Verhoeven has commented — is it entirely clear whether the trip to Mars "really" happens. Beginning with the scene in which Quaid/Schwarzenegger visits Rekall (with an extra L in the movie), the script maintains deliberate ambiguity as to whether the events are occurring in the physical world or only in Quaid's own fantasy.
This short story was also the inspiration for the 2004 romance film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. In the film, Joel Barish (Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet) meet for what they think is the first time. As it turns out, they were once lovers, but both decided to erase the memories concerning their relationship. In the film there are many similarities with the story by Philip K. Dick, including the office of the memory-erasing company, the secretary, the doctor, the two employees, as well as the attitude of the main character towards life; miserable.
| Short Stories by Phillip K Dick |
| Adjustment Team | All We Marsmen | Autofac | Beyond Lies the Wub | Beyond the Door | Breakfast at Twilight | Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked | Captive Market | The Crawlers | The Chromium Fence | The Crystal Crypt | The Days of Perky Pat | The Defenders | The Electric Ant | Exhibit Piece | The Exit Door Leads In | Explorers We | The Eye of The Sibyl | The Eyes Have It | Fair Game | Faith of our Fathers | The Father-thing | Fawn, Look Back | Foster, You're Dead! | A Game of Unchance | A Glass of Darkness | The Golden Man | Holy Quarrel | The Hood Maker | Human Is | I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon | If There Were No Benny Cemoli | James P. Crow | The Last of the Masters | The Little Black Box | A Little Something For Us Tempunauts | Meddler | Minority Report | Misadjustment | The Mold of Yancy | The Name of the Game is Death | Not By Its Cover | Novelty Act | Null-o | Of Withered Apples | Oh, to be a Blobel! | Orpheus with Clay Feet | Pay for the Printer | Paycheck | The Pre-persons | Precious Artifact | A Present for Pat | The Preserving Machine | Prize Ship | Progeny | Project Plowshare | Prominent Author | Psi-man Heal My Child! | Rautavaara's Case | Recall Mechanism | Retreat Syndrome | Return Match | Roog | Sales Pitch | Second Variety | Service Call | Shell Game | The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford | Small Town | Some Kinds of Life | Souvenir | Stability | Stand-by | Strange Eden | A Surface Raid | Survey Team | Time Pawn | To Serve the Master | Tony and the Beetles | The Trouble with Bubbles | The Unreconstructed M | The Unteleported Man | Upon the Dull Earth | The Variable Man | War Game | War Veteran | The War with the Fnools | Waterspider | We Can Remember It For You Wholesale | What the Dead Men Say | What'll We Do With Ragland Park? | A World of Talent | The World She Wanted | Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday |
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