Chronopolis

The peculiarities of not being able to drive can sometimes mean a long wait at a bus stop.  5 minutes in a charity shop can usually render a science-fiction paperback for about 50p to help pass the time, and it was in this way that I picked up Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun, which has one of those weird, sexually suggestive covers that has nothing to do with the story.  One of the most interesting things about that story is its perspective.  It's set on a planet that is fairly similar to ours, but it's told from the point of view of a person who's spent his whole life living in cramped quarters underground.  Things that would be normal for the reader, like going outside into the open air and coming into contact with sunshine, are told to us as frightening experiences, with the main character longing for close walls and familiar stale air.  I quite enjoyed it as a trick, and Chronopolis does a similar thing.

Précis:  Guy in a world with no clocks becomes fascinated with time management, and ends up on the wrong side of the law trying to make devices to accurately measure time.

Taking a step back from our increasing obsession with cramming as much as possible into every waking hour, we see the burnt out shell of this kind of society from the perspective of one where there is no measurement of time.  JGB gives us a look at two different worlds at the same time, exposing the flaws of both.  Before clocks and watches were outlawed, the entire city population ran like clockwork, with staggered travelling times, working hours and lunch breaks to ease the strain on services and businesses.  It's the logical extension of alternate day driving, which helped a great deal to reduce smog in Beijing (filthy dirty city) during the Olympics, and a solution to the Half-Time Kettle Effect.

Amongst all the philosophical explication flying around, there is one snippet that I found very thought-provoking.  It comes from a conversation between an English teacher (it's always an English teacher) and the young hero, who doesn't understand how you could hurt anybody with a clock:

"Isn't it obvious?  You can time him, know exactly how long it takes him to do something."
"Well?"
"Then you can make him do it faster."

Anybody with a job will recognise this as time-management, 'doing more for less' and the dreaded 'efficiency gains'.

Now here's a thing, since reading The Naked Sun, I've learnt to drive and got a car.  Now that I can get home faster, will I ever have to nip into charity shops in search of paperbacks again?