What is real? In We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Philip K. Dick brings that question to bear on the most intimate territory imaginable—the memories that form the bedrock of a human life, and how easily, it turns out, they can be bought and sold.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1966, and the basis for Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the story follows Douglas Quail, a mild-mannered clerk consumed by an impossible dream: to visit Mars. Unable to afford the journey, he turns to Rekal, Incorporated, a company that offers something tantalizingly close—implanted memories of an adventure he never had. But something goes wrong, and the line between implanted memory and reality begins to blur.

Compact and relentless, the story moves with the momentum of a thriller while exploring the philosophical terrain that defines Dick’s work—questions of identity, authenticity, and the nature of reality.