'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 The Demolished Man about?
In 2301 telepathic 'Espers' staff the courts, the boardrooms and the police, and there has not been a premeditated murder in seventy years — until ruthless tycoon Ben Reich decides to kill his rival and beat the peeper police, armouring his thoughts behind a maddening advertising jingle ('Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun'). Police prefect Lincoln Powell knows almost at once; the duel is over proof, and over the buried thing actually driving Reich. Bester renders telepathic society in typographic fireworks and Freudian depth-charges, at a pace that still feels reckless.
Why it matters
Winner of the first-ever Hugo Award for Best Novel (1953). The inverted-detective structure, ESP worldbuilding and corporate-noir energy made it a foundation stone for cyberpunk.
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