Re-reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, I felt very certain its events had taken place in Now Wait for Last Year. Or was it The Martian Timeslip? Maybe I don't really know Dick, not like some other people do. Or maybe Dick's narratives intentionally haunt each other, in the same way that he saw an ancient, more real civilization lurking behind its spectral double: our own. Here, I am thinking of Dick's notion that history stopped moving forward in the 1st Century AD (Rome) and that "the Empire never ended." Am I remembering that phrase correctly from VALIS or am I just thinking of the title of the story that appeared in Astounding Magazine?
Why was I so certain that the phrase "Choosy Choosers Choose Chew-Z" appeared in Stigmata, when it was really something much more simple? There's something about the doubling in Dick that spoils the memory. Something about the possible presents/alternate futures/co-located selves that make it seem like something that isn't there might still really be there somewhere. Is Dick trying to get us to realize how close we are to other possibilities or just to pay more attention to the present Real?
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