Tik-Tok

Set in a not-so-distant future United States, Tik-Tok (1983), a sci-fi novel by American author John Sladek, follows an intelligent robot named Tik-Tok who rises through the American class system by becoming an incorrigible criminal and eventually is nominated to become Vice President of the United States. The novel has been interpreted both as speculative—predicting a future in which artificial intelligence becomes uncannily humanlike—and as allegorical, illuminating the violence and complex trauma inherent to narratives about the American Dream and the relation between collective class struggle and individual greed. The novel pays frequent homage to the work of Isaac Asimov, one of Sladek’s literary heroes and one of the founding writers of the sci-fi genre.

As the novel opens, Tik-Tok is working at his owner’s house, painting a mural on the wall of a room. While gazing out the window, he sees a blind girl playing in mud. That afternoon, a detective appears at the house looking for information on the girl, who has gone missing. Tik-Tok claims not to have seen her. His owners, Barbie and Claud, return, looking upon the mural with distaste. Tik-Tok reveals, privately, that he killed the blind girl and used her blood to paint the mural. Later, an art critic hires Tik-Tok as a painter, paying his owners instead of him for his work. Tik-Tok describes several other past owners. These include an eccentric family, the Culpeppers, at whose home he met his first love, a robot called Gumdrop. While they were acting intimately, the Culpeppers’ son, Orlando, secretly filmed them, humiliating them. Eventually, the matriarch, Lavinia Culpepper, became allergic to air and moved to outer space, leaving behind Orlando and his older brother, Clayton. The family went bankrupt and sold Tik-Tok.

Tik-Tok was purchased by Colonel Jitney, the proprietor of a line of pancake products made from the flesh of a rare bird. His next owner was Judge Juggernaut, a sadistic abuser of robots. Tik-Tok was rescued by Reverend Flint, an erratic man with fanatic religious assistants. One of these assistants later murdered the reverend. Tik-Tok diving deeper into his past, until he reaches the story of a trip to Mars. He accompanied Deacon Copper, an enigmatic scholar of Martian culture. Copper was later killed by a group of pirates, including Smiling Jack, who ambushed their ship. After disembarking and surveying his surroundings, Tik-Tok realized that they never left earth at all but were swindled into taking a simulated trip to Mars, leaving them in one of Earth’s deserts.



After the fake trip to Mars, Tik-Tok teamed up with the crazed doctor Hekyll and a sentient surgical robot named Buttons. Buttons botched a gruesome surgery attempt, killing his subject, a priest. Hekyll and Buttons, left without work, sold Tik-Tok to a shop, Sam’s Soul City. It was there that Barbie and Claud found him.

Back in the present day, Tik-Tok’s painting career is flourishing. He also becomes a lone-wolf terrorist, inflicting horrors on humans such as blowing up a plane full of innocent people. His moral compass is hard to pinpoint, for even as he commits these acts, he is compassionate and benevolent toward abandoned robots. He reunites with his old friend Smiling Jack, and the two carry out several lucrative robberies before Tik-Tok turns on Jack and murders him. Eventually, Tik-Tok builds his own company. Publicly, he becomes a champion of robot rights, convincing humans that they are harmless and good. He becomes a national hero after staging the rescue of an elderly woman by setting fire to her home. At the end of the novel, the American government bestows robots with the same rights as humans. Tik-Tok is nominated for Vice President of the United States. Just before his election, a video surfaces depicting Tik-Tok killing an old man with whom he once played chess. Tik-Tok is thrown in prison, where he writes an autobiography. The autobiography is so heartfelt that the public frees him from prison and renews his nomination for Vice President.