'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman
Hugo and Nebula winner, and one of the most reprinted SF stories ever written — the genre's definitive fable of civil disobedience.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is High-Rise about?
'Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog...' — from that opening line, Ballard rewinds three months to show a luxury tower of two thousand affluent professionals descending, floor by floor, into tribal war over swimming pools, lifts and garbage chutes. The building works perfectly; that's the problem. Dr Robert Laing, the documentary-maker Wilder and the architect Royal in his penthouse map the new hierarchy as the residents discover they prefer the savagery — commuting out to work each morning in clean suits, returning at dusk to the raids. Civilisation as a veneer one power-cut thick.
Why it matters
The definitive vertical-dystopia novel, endlessly cited in architecture and sociology as well as fiction; filmed by Ben Wheatley in 2015 with Tom Hiddleston.
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Animal Farm
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