"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Harlan Ellison was not identified as a New Wave science fiction writer at the outset of the movement, but today, critics see his work—especially his 1967 collection Dangerous Visions, in which “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” appears—as influential to that genre.

New Wave science fiction was, in many respects, a reaction to Golden Age science fiction, which often wasn’t received as serious literature. Golden Age science fiction (1938-1960) was often criticized for utilizing the same plots and character tropes. By the mid-1960s, “too many writers were working with the same few traditional sf themes, and both the style and content of sf were becoming generally overpredictable” (Nicholls, Peter, and David Langford. “New Wave.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. SFE Ltd/Ansible Editions, 1 May 2023).

New Wave authors, in an attempt to legitimize genre fiction as literature, put a greater emphasis on literary experimentation, using Modernist and Postmodernist narrative strategies. In “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” Ellison employs a nonchronological format, delivers some of the narrative exposition in stream of consciousness, creates new words like “commex” and “mineez,” and uses unusual