We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
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We Can Remember It for You Wholesale is a novelette by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a classic meshing of reality, false memory and real memory.
[edit] Plot summary
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.
[edit] Adaptations
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. The script maintains deliberate ambiguity as to whether the events are occurring in the physical world or only in Quaid's own fantasy.
The Cookie Lady · Stability · Roog · Project: Earth · Expendable · The Little Movement · The Preserving Machine · The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford · Beyond Lies the Wub · The Gun · The Skull · The Defenders · Mr. Spaceship · Piper In The Woods · The Infinities · The Indefatigable Frog · The Variable Man · The Crystal Crypt · The Builder · Meddler · Paycheck · Out In The Garden · The Great C · The King Of The Elves · Colony · Prize Ship · Nanny · Beyond the Door · Second Variety · Jon's World · The Cosmic Poachers · Some Kinds of Life · Progeny · Martians Come In Clouds · The Commuter · The World She Wanted · A Surface Raid · The Trouble with Bubbles · A Present for Pat · Breakfast at Twilight · Of Withered Apples · The Hood Maker · Human Is · The Impossible Planet · Adjustment Team · Impostor · James P. Crow · Planet For Transients · Small Town · Souvenir · Survey Team · Vulcan's Hammer · Prominent Author · Fair Game · The Hanging Stranger · The Eyes Have It · Time Pawn · The Golden Man · The Turning Wheel · The Last of the Masters · The Father-thing · Strange Eden · A Glass of Darkness · Tony and the Beetles · Null-O · Exhibit Piece · To Serve the Master · The Crawlers · Sales Pitch · Shell Game · Upon the Dull Earth · Foster, You're Dead! · Pay for the Printer · War Veteran · The Chromium Fence · Misadjustment · A World of Talent · Psi-man Heal My Child! · Service Call · Autofac · Captive Market · The Mold of Yancy · Minority Report · The Unreconstructed M · Recall Mechanism · Explorers We · War Game · If There Were No Benny Cemoli · Novelty Act · Waterspider · What the Dead Men Say · Orpheus with Clay Feet · Stand-by · The Days of Perky Pat · What'll We Do With Ragland Park? · Oh, to be a Blobel! · All We Marsmen · The War with the Fnools · Cantata 140 · A Game of Unchance · The Little Black Box · Precious Artifact · The Unteleported Man · Retreat Syndrome · Project Plowshare · Faith of our Fathers · We Can Remember It For You Wholesale · Holy Quarrel · Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday · Return Match · Not By Its Cover · The Story To End All Stories · The Electric Ant · A. Lincoln, Simulacrum · Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked · The Different Stages Of Love · A Little Something For Us Tempunauts · The Pre-persons · The Eye of The Sibyl · The Exit Door Leads In · Chains Of Air, Web Of Aethyr · Strange Memories Of Death · I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon · Rautavaara's Case · Fawn, Look Back · The Alien Mind · The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out Of Its Tree · Goodbye, Vincent · 11-17-80 · The Name of the Game is Death
