High-Rise
The definitive vertical-dystopia novel, endlessly cited in architecture and sociology as well as fiction; filmed by Ben Wheatley in 2015 with Tom Hiddleston.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman
by Harlan Ellison · 1965
What is 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman about?
In a future where the schedule is sovereign and lateness is deducted from your lifespan, one man in motley pelts the moving walkways with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of jelly beans, delaying the master schedule by seven minutes and committing the only revolutionary act left: wasting time, joyfully, in public. The Ticktockman — nobody calls him the Master Timekeeper to his mask — must make an example of him. Ellison wrote it in six hours, structured it like a juggling act, and seeded it with a Thoreau quotation doing the heavy lifting. Short, anarchic and permanent.
Why it matters
Hugo and Nebula winner, and one of the most reprinted SF stories ever written — the genre's definitive fable of civil disobedience.
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