Foreshadowing is a literary technique which uses early sections of the text to hint at what will happen later in the story. It is used to allow the reader to develop expectations about the unfolding of the narrative or to create dramatic irony—when readers know something that characters don’t. In We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Quail’s dreams of Mars foreshadow the importance that Mars will play in his future (or past).

However, the foreshadowing of Mars’s importance also establishes expectations which are contravened by the story. The narrative follows Quail as he regresses through his personalities, prompted by sudden recollections of real or fake memories. During these transformations, Mars is at first incredibly important as the site of Quail’s successful assassination mission, and then suddenly completely unimportant as the threat of tiny aliens overshadows the threat of a Mars-Earth conflict. The use of foreshadowing follows the same template as the narrative. It still establishes the importance of Mars, but the ironic twist is that Quail must come to terms with the consequences of a visit to Mars that he barely remembers.