When I say educational, I just mean with regard to the movie.

This story was the basis for the 1990 movie Total Recall, which incidentally was more or less at the pinnacle of Schwarzenegger's career. But it's a short story; it's only about 10 pages. That means most of the movie was "adapted".

The movie and the written story start out almost the same way (whether or not you imagine the character in the book as Schwarzenegger is up to you). But the written story ends abruptly after the protagonist's real memories are accidentally stirred up by initiating the "Rekal" procedure. He doesn't get in any firefights; he doesn't go back to Mars; there are no mutant hookers; he doesn't seek retribution for what's been done to him. Actually there's a "surprise twist" ending that prevents anything like what's in the movie from happening (I won't give it away) (because it's lame). Anyway, the story is literally asking whether it's inevitable that someone would seek an adventure on Mars just because it's in his nature to do so regardless of having his memory erased. Or perhaps that having some memories erased could not completely prevent someone from having thoughts similar to those erased. These are some of the questions you're left with, which are interesting.

But the movie turns out to be interesting as well because it interrupts the story right in the middle of the dangerous situation when the character is just starting to remember that he's really a spy, and before the situation can be nullified, it wonders out loud what else could happen instead. The questions and plot holes deliberately introduced by the movie are curiously very much in the spirit of Philip K. Dick even though they aren't the same questions and plot holes introduced by the original story. Even though the movie was cheesy (and we liked it that way), I think it was pretty creative in working the ideas it started from. Good job!

The most annoying part of the 2012 movie is that it's a remake of the 1990 movie, not a reinterpretation of the original story at all. That's almost as dumb as if someone were to remake Conan without Schwarzenegger. Why even bother. I guess they lied about this as part of the obligatory plan to trick people into seeing another bad movie.