Sunday, May 7, 2017

Week 10: The Fiction of Ideas

For this week I read the short story,  "Repent, Harlequin" Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison. The story, true to the fiction of ideas movement, is certainly less about the adventure earlier science fiction works embraced and more about speculation and a dystopian future. Though it was written in a rather disjointed manner that, in my opinion, not even short stories can pull of with much success, the ten page short did bring up rather important ideas regarding our culture and how technology has been increasingly speeding life up and creating more order while removing any flexibility and individuality.
In this short story time is the most precious commodity and wasting even a minute or two of it results in punishments from the Ticktockman. The job of the Harlequin character was to expose the horrors of this reality and show the need for moderation. While punctuality and structure are not inherently bad, this is an extreme future that reminds us of the importance of balance and to slow down once in a while. Advice that is definitely still needed today, maybe even more so.

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