“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellsion (Galaxy, December 1965)1 starts off with a quote by Thoreau for those who “need points sharply made” (e.g. me):
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
This ad hominem attack (“lump of dirt”, etc.) goes on to criticize a few other groups, before going on to suggest that only a few (“heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense”) serve the state with their consciences and/or resist it, but are commonly treated as enemies.
The story itself eventually starts (after a few opaque opening paragraphs) by introducing its two characters, the Harlequin—an atavistic, trouble-making personality in a future world of exact timekeeping—and the Ticktockman, the Master Timekeeper:
And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshippers of the sun’s passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don’t keep the schedule tight.
Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late. It becomes a sin. Then a crime. Then a crime punishable by this:
EFFECTIVE 15 JULY 2389 12:00:00 midnight, the office of the Master Timekeeper will require all citizens to submit their time cards and cardioplates for processing. In accordance with Statute 555-7-SGH-999 governing the revocation of time per capita, all cardioplates will be keyed to the individual holder and—
What they had done was devise a method of curtailing the amount of life a person could have. If he was ten minutes late, he lost ten minutes of his life. An hour was proportionately worth more revocation. If someone was consistently tardy, he might find himself, on a Sunday night, receiving a communiqué from the Master Timekeeper that his time had run out, and he would be “turned off” at high noon on Monday, please straighten your affairs, sir, madame, or bisex.
And so, by this simple scientific expedient (utilizing a scientific process held dearly secret by the Ticktockman’s office) the System was maintained. It was the only expedient thing to do. It was, after all, patriotic. The schedules had to be met. After all, there was a war on!
But, wasn’t there always?
After several of the Harlequin’s disruptive escapades (jelly beans scattered on rolling roads that are very similar to those in Heinlein’s story, making speeches on the top of construction projects, etc.) he is (spoiler) eventually captured. Although he initially resists, he is broken and brainwashed and repents on TV. Then he is destroyed . . . but, in the closing sentences, the Ticktockman is three minutes late on his schedule.
The Harlequin’s sacrifice has presumably altered/affected the system.
It’s tempting, because of the heavyweight opening quote, to analyse this story’s political message in some depth2 but, on reflection, I think it’s probably just a bit of clever froth meant to pander to the anti-authoritarian crowd of the mid-1960s.
*** (Good). 4,350 words.
1. The introduction to the story in the Vandermeers’ The Big Book of Science Fiction states:
Ellison wrote it in six hours in order to present it the next day at the Milford Writer’s Workshop, run by Damon Knight.
And, in some parts, it reads like a story written in six hours (see my comments about the opening paragraphs—you can almost see the writer’s coffee begin to kick in).
2. The story generated a lot of comment in a recent (closed) group read, partly because people were tempted to see more in it than is actually there (when I say people, I mostly mean me).