"'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" is the story of a future world, controlled by a tight schedule and the ticking of a clock. In charge of this world is the Ticktockman, a robot-like figure with the power to shorten or terminate anyone's life as a penalty for running late.

The story begins with a long quote from Henry David Thoreau's essay, "Civil Disobedience." In this passage, Thoreau asserts that most men "serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." Further, a "very few" men serve the state with their consciences, a service that forces them into resistance of the state. These men, according to Thoreau, are heroes, and often, martyrs.

Ellison then shifts to the story, beginning somewhere in the middle. He sets the story in the future, at a moment when one individual is resisting the enforced...