"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781887424356 (1887424350)
Publish date: October 28th 1997
Publisher: Underwood Books
Pages no: 48
Edition language: English
In a future where humanity has become obsessed with timekeeping and punctuality, a single mysterious figure tries to make a change, by wasting everybody's time.Try reading that in a deep movie trailer voice. “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman is a whimsical and satirical dystopian short story...
This book is beautifully illustrated and produced. The story is visceral and confusing and mad - like the few other things of Ellison's I've read.
I read this book after hearing about an author challenging the movie In Time that comes out next week starring Justin Timberlake. The movie is about people only living until the age of 25, and for any time after that they work to earn it. Living until 25 though, means that you don't age past that....
I can read this once. And then countless times. And every time I do, it offers me something more, something different. It's an eccentric story, no less terrifying for it's rather interesting characters. A world where people are simply turned "off" when their time finishes - terrifying, right? The Ti...
Roughly, imagine 1984 as a big-budget comedy with a lot of CGI. Oddly enough, it works, or at least I thought it did when I read this in my early teens.