Philip Dick

What kind of world does Dick start to build in the opening paragraphs of “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”? In what ways does it seem futuristic? In what ways is it utterly familiar?

8 thoughts on “Philip Dick

  1. Thomas Wolpow

    In the initial moments of the story, Philip Dick juxtaposes the familiar with the futuristic. Quail, haven just awoken, begins dreaming of mars as hover cars fly outside. His wife, annoyed by his constant day-dreaming, suggest that they take a vacation in an underwater, aquatic resort. Despite the advanced technology and awesome world, the opening of the story seems more interested with the mundane. Quail conducts a standard morning routine, and his dissatisfaction as a “miserable little salaried employee” indicates that the future has not relieved people of their frustrations. Further, the argument between Quail and his wife argument indicates that the future has not solved the problem of relationship tension. Overall, Dick creates a futuristic world, but only on the surface. The human condition remains rooted in the past.

  2. Cady Barns

    The opening of “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” creates a strong juxtaposition between futuristic concepts and familiarity. The story jumps back and forth between Quail’s ambiguous imaginings of mars and his mundane-seeming reality, as well as being interspersed with details that are clearly added to indicate that the setting is a futuristic society. For example, the mentioning of “year round aquatic resorts”, “foot runnels”, and “hover cars” seem out of place in context with the otherwise average setting and typical lives that the characters seem to lead. However, in considering the world that Dick builds in the opening paragraphs it is important to take into account the time period in which this story came out. There are certain details that may seem utterly familiar to us but probably sounded quite futuristic in the 60s, such as “pressing the hot coffee button on the stove.” Additionally the idea of space travel and humans on mars would have seemed highly futuristic when this came out in 1966 as humans had yet to even walk on a celestial body until the 1969 Apollo mission landed astronauts on the moon.

  3. Cole Easton

    In the opening paragraphs of “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Dick builds a world that is futuristic in grand concepts, but very similar in lifestyle. In other words, the ability of mankind to travel to and traverse mars clearly sets this story in the future. The presence of this type of space travel suggests that this is not the near future either but a century or more in all likelihood. Additionally, Doug’s wife mentions the year-round aquatic resorts at the bottom of the ocean. This is another concept that sets this story far in the future as an entire tourist industry has developed in an area on earth that few people are even able to explore. However, these two futuristic concepts as well aren’t very relevant to day to day life. Mars is only for the government as far as we know at the beginning of this story, and the ocean resorts are vacation destinations. Additionally there are “runnels” and “hover-cars” and the couple live in a “conapt.” But, these words are all similar to words we use today, so it is easy to imagine what purpose these things serve in this futuristic world. Again, if people are living in apartments and using a form of road and car for transportation, it is a similar lifestyle to today. Every other detail of this initial morning scene could be out of a story that takes place yesterday. Doug is about to embark on his daily commute to his job as a lowly clerk, he lives in an apartment with his wife and he puts on the coffee before work in the kitchen. There is no automation in the morning routine where we would expect. In a story that includes hover-cars and Mars, why is the coffee not made automatically? Why is the job of a clerk not automatized? Dick makes an by deciding to indicate that the story takes place in the future, but doesn’t change the lifestyle or habits from those inhabiting the present-day world.

  4. Jack Tyrie

    The opening paragraphs of “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” builds a world that is at the same time familiar and futuristic. The way Douglas Quail starts his day is utterly familiar to that of our current time. He rolls out of bed where he was having fantastic dreams of being on Mars to find himself trapped in his boring, monotonous life. Douglas feels trapped in his life referring to himself as “A miserable little salaried employee”. He wishes for more adventure and excitement in his life, something that many people can relate to. At the same time, the story creates a sense of a futuristic society. For instance, Kirsten speaks to Doug about visiting one of the “year-round aquatic resorts”. Additionally, the idea of implanting and erasing memories into someone’s brain is completely futuristic. While this may have been futuristic at the time it was released, it does not feel as far fetched today. With the way technology is progressing, It seems as though the things meant to be futuristic are somewhat attainable. For instance, the taxis in the story are driven by robots and today we have self-driving cars. If you look at this story from the perspective of someone in the 1960s, it is futuristic, however, today not so much.

  5. Sophia Hodges

    It is interesting that Philip Dick chooses to enter his reader into this story using a dream. When we as readers first meet Douglas Quail, we are unsure whether he is just dreaming about going to Mars as a surreal, utterly impossible desire, which is what that would be in the modern day. Many things happen in dreams that are unrealistic, but that would not make the world that we occupy “futuristic” in any way. However, if Douglas Quail’s dream is based on reality, then we are dealing with an entirely different story. Aside from the dream-like quality of the first several paragraphs, the rest of the opening is relatively realistic. We assume we are on an earth-like planet, with the same social norms as we are accustomed to, and aside from the “conapt” and “runnels” we generally understand everything that is going on around Douglas.

  6. Daniel Golstein

    The beauty of the first page of Dick’s We Can Remember it for You Wholesale is that many factors are futuristic and familiar simultaneously. Dick has a achieved this through a certain – probably unintentional – vagueness. The opening line leaves the reader uncertain as to whether or not travel to Mars is possible. Has Douglas awoken ‘wanting’ Mars in a childish, dream-like sense – knowing, however, that this is likely impossible? Alternatively, has he awoken thinking this in the same way that an individual in the modern day may well awaken craving a holiday to Spain. This first line gives no context; the reader doesn’t know whether we are watching Douglas wake up in a technologically advanced future, or the same world as them – one where imagination can render anything possible.
    As a contemporary reader of this 1966 story, the vagueness is emphasized in the reference to Mars as a planet ‘which only government agents and high officials had seen.’ Written before the Moon landing, the capacity to land safely on other planets may have seemed outlandish to Dick, but to the contemporary reader this line makes perfect sense. ‘Government agents’ may well refer to NASA astronauts, and ‘high officials’ may simply refer to those within the government with the clearance to watch and review footage from the crafts. Though in the story this seems to imply that these individuals have indeed all actually visited, this remains understandably familiar to the modern reader if this is considered, though it may have seemed futuristic to the 1960s consumer.
    The undoubtably familiar element is in Douglas’ somewhat rude awakening from his dreams of adventure into a ‘miserable,’ monotonous and ‘bitter’ working life. Even then, this is cloaked with historically contextualized futurism; though a ‘hot coffee button’ may be completely normal to the coffee-machine owning contemporary reader, such a product would not have existed in a mid-‘60’s kitchen. At the end of the page, however, is something so futuristic that even a contemporary reader finds humor in its impossibility. Kirsten, Douglas’ wife, dismisses his dreams of Mars, offering instead a week-long vacation to the depths of the ocean using an ‘artificial gill outfit.’ The irony here is striking; the modern reader can recognize that travel to Mars is far closer than human inhabitation on the ocean floor.

  7. Gabriel Mahoney

    The world that Dick starts to build feels familiar in the way that Douglas and Kirsten Quail begin their day. Douglas woke up and went to turn the coffee on, something that is very mundane and a seemingly normal thing in this era. The familiarity also stems from the story seeming very familiar to the start of non futuristic stories. The opening is set in a home with a husband and wife bickering about an issue with their marriage. The attempts of Dick in the opening paragraphs to make the world that Douglas Quail lives in seem futuristic fall short in my opinion. He does dream of going to Mars and Kirsten attempts to plan a deep sea diving trip, but nothing in the morning which the story begins is convincingly futuristic. The hover cars glanced at through the window and the traffic and foot runnels seem uncreative and it feels as though you are thrown into the story at the same time as Douglas Quail. I feel like this may be a result of the familiarity of the rest of opening of the story.

  8. Nicholas O'Leary

    You are immediately confronted with something that is unusual and futuristic to use, that of the concept of being on Mars, and that people already are living there. Besides this idea that Mars is attainable, the next several paragraphs are very normal, even the part that might be intended to be futuristic of making coffee with a push of a button. Dick does a wonderful job of weaving the imaginable and mundane tasks that we are all familiar with from many sources, that of brushing hair, being “a miserable little salaried employee,” and even of having a slightly disgruntled bitter wife. All of this we can very easily picture and can maybe relate to in our own lives. But despite parts like these being common throughout the story, Dick repeatably weaves in the idea of Quail’s dream to visit Mars, and that others have already been there, in with these normal thoughts and activities in order to give us a world that we can easily imagine, perhaps slightly more advanced but otherwise still human and normal. This normal, attainable world is completely realistic, and allows us to become accustomed to the idea that he somehow will get to Mars before the more far fetched idea of implanted memories and erasing them is introduced.

Leave a Reply