Tag: Conformity

Shape by Robert Sheckley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Shape by Robert Sheckley (first published as Keep Your Shape, Galaxy, November 19531) sees a spaceship of shape-shifting Glom arrive in Earth orbit; they are on a mission to place a displacer in one of Earth’s atomic reactors to open up a wormhole for an invasion. Previous expeditions have failed.
Before they descend to the surface, the commander of the ship, Pid, addresses his crewmates Ger and Ilg:

“A lot of hopes are resting on this expedition,” he began slowly. “We’re a long way from home now.”
Ger the detector nodded. Ilg the radioman flowed out of his prescribed shape and molded himself comfortably to a wall.
“However,” Pid said sternly, “distance is no excuse for promiscuous shapelessness.”
Ilg flowed hastily back into proper radioman’s shape.
“Exotic shapes will undoubtedly be called for,” Pid went on. “And for that we have a special dispensation. But remember—any shape not assumed strictly in the line of duty is a device of The Shapeless One!”
Ger’s body surfaces abruptly stopped flowing.

This sets up the story’s conflict, which is that, although the aliens on Glom can assume any shape they want, there are strict caste rules which determine those they are allowed to adopt in society—and Pid has learned before his departure that his two crewmates may not be reliable in this respect:

“Ger, your detector, is suspected of harboring alterationist tendencies. He was once fined for assuming a quasi-hunter shape. Ilg has never had any definite charge brought against him. But I hear that he remains immobile for suspiciously long periods of time. Possibly, he fancies himself a thinker.”
“But sir,” Pid protested, “if they are even slightly tainted with alterationism or shapelessness, why send them on this expedition?”
The chief hesitated before answering. “There are plenty of Glom I could trust,” he said slowly. “But those two have certain qualities of resourcefulness and imagination that will be needed on this expedition.” He sighed. “I really don’t understand why those qualities are usually linked with shapelessness.”

After the three of them land on Earth they dissolve the ship (spoiler), and it isn’t long (there are some episodes that play out beside the reactor) before Ilg and Ger disappear. Pid later discovers that Ilg has become a tree and a thinker, and Ger a dog and hunter. Worse, Pid learns that another dog Ger was chasing earlier is a member of a previous Glom expedition.
The final section sees Pid eventually manage to get inside the reactor building, where the alarm is raised and he is pursued by guards. Then, plagued by thoughts about freedom of shape, and just as he is almost able to activate the displacer, he looks out a nearby window:

It was really true! He hadn’t fully understood what Ger had meant when he said that there were species on this planet to satisfy every need. Every need! Even his!
Here he could satisfy a longing of the pilot caste that went even deeper than piloting.
He looked again, then smashed the displacer to the floor. The door burst open, and in the same instant he flung himself through the window.
The men raced to the window and stared out. But they were unable to understand what they saw.
There was only a great white bird out there, flapping awkwardly but with increasing strength, trying to overtake a flight of birds in the distance.

This is a great finish to a good story, and puts this on my list of Sheckley’s best stories (Specialist, Pilgrimage to Earth, etc.).
One of the things that particularly struck me about this piece was how concisely and clearly written it is and, although there is a message here about social conformity, we aren’t continually bludgeoned with it (I shudder to think what a modern day, MFA’d version of this story would look like).
**** (Very Good). 4,550 words. Story links (see footnote 1).

1. The version of the story I read was in The Arbor House Book of Modern Science Fiction, but the original version in Galaxy magazine (as Keep Your Shape) is longer (5,900 words) and has a completely different ending (and one that makes it a much weaker and more pedestrian story).
In the latter version (the story changes from “He studied himself for a moment, bared his teeth at Ger, and loped toward the gate.” on p. 16 of Galaxy, section break bottom right/p. 67 of the Arbor House anthology) Pid first turns into a dog, and then a man, but can’t stand either shape, so eventually changes into a sparrow. As Pid flies towards the reactor building he is attacked by a hawk and, after slipping through its grasp, changes into a bigger hawk and scares it away. Then Pid drops the displacer and flies after the attacking hawk to find how it hovered in the air.
Theodore Sturgeon used to say something along the lines of, “Horace Gold could turn an average story into a good story, and an excellent story into a good story”. One wonders if this is an example.
Story link (Shape, Arbor House, recommended version).
Story link (Keep Your Shape, Galaxy).

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellsion

Posted on by Paul Fraser

“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).