"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman is a short story by Harlan Ellison first published in December 1965 in the American magazine Galaxy. It won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1965 and the Hugo Award in the same category in 1966. Ellison wrote it in a single six-hour session as an assignment for a Milford writers' workshop held the following day.

The story opens with an epigraph from Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, which warns that submission to the clock turns people into machines. Ellison develops that idea in a world where everything runs with watchmaker precision: shifts, schedules and travel times are measured to the second, and a small delay in one part throws the whole mechanism out of step. To keep order there is the Master Timekeeper, nicknamed the Ticktockman. Every citizen wears a cardioplate that deducts from their lifespan a span equal to any delay they cause, and when repeated offences use up their remaining years, the device stops their heart.

Against this system stands the Harlequin, an eccentric jester who disrupts the routine with playful acts, such as showering factory workers with thousands of colored jelly beans. The plot builds toward his capture and a twist that tests the meaning of rebellion and conformity. The story also alludes to Orwell's 1984, knowledge of which helps explain the protagonist's final fate. Its success made it one of the most frequently cited stories in the genre.