Fire Burns. Water Flows. Ellison Sues.

Folks in my circle who fancy themselves fans of serious science-fiction movies are seriously excited for Andrew Niccol's "In Time;" set in a world where they've cured aging. To keep overpopulation from being an issue, nobody physically ages past 25... but all hearts are on a "timer" and "minutes left to live" is now the sole form of currency - rich people get to be immortals, poor people live day-by-day. Justin Timberlake is the hero, a working-class schlub who winds up with a suicidal rich guy's massive time-surplus and ingratiates himself into wealthy-immortal society, ultimately becoming a Robin Hood-esque figure stealing time and giving it to the poor. I like this concept because it's the best kind of "idea scifi," using a "what if?" hook as a metaphor for something relevant to the real present (in this case, social-economics.) Hollywood, on the other hand, no doubt likes this concept because it provides a story-driven excuse to cast every single role with model-gorgeous twenty-somethings (Olivia Wilde and Amanda Seyfried co-star, so... there ya go.)

Now, as if the incidental tea-leaves weren't already looking good for this one, the film has now crossed into a potential-scifi-blockbuster rite of passage: Being sued for copyright infringement by Harlan Ellison.




Ellison believes that the film shares enough similarities with his 1965 short story "Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman;" and is suing to block the film's release and for compensatory damages. This sort of thing happens a lot in genre film - typically it's quietly "taken care of" by a settlement to avoid bad press. Ellison, however, prefers to go big with this stuff - famously, he sued "The Terminator" for similarities to two of his "Outer Limits" episodes.

FWIW, "Repent" is prescient less of this film and more of "V For Vendetta" - the main character dresses like a clown and commits acts of vigilante nuisance in order to disrupt a dystopian society where timely schedule-keeping is federally-enforced and punishable by lowering life-expectancy.