We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and Other Classic Stories

Perhaps better known as the futuristic Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle Total Recall, I’m picking this novelette over some of Dick’s other, more popular works simply because it makes the most of its short length to tell a snappy and surprisingly amusing and layered the story. The tale of a menial office worker haunted by dreams of Mars, this novelette peels back perceptions of identity and memory by having protagonist Douglas Quail’s dreams be distant recollections of a former life. While this drops him into a cycle of violence and memory erasure, the novelette pulls an effective and humorous twist… show more.

I was back and forth for a while on which Philip K. Dick story I wanted to recommend, and I finally decided on "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (which inspired the movie Total Recall). What I love about Dick's fiction is the way it plays with questions of identity, while managing to repeatedly surprise the reader, and "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" is one of his best stories for messing with the protagonist's—and the reader's—brain.