The Sleeper Awakes (1899)

After reading [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167322714s/21611.jpg|423]* with it's time travel by effect of relativity I've moved on to time machine-free time travel by means of a really long sleep...

It's hard to judge this novel on its own merits, rather than making comparisons with later depictions of dystopias such as the equally highly stratified society of [b:Brave New World|5129|Brave New World|Aldous Huxley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327865608s/5129.jpg|3204877], published over a quarter of a century later. In some ways it's very much of its time: more so in the racism and sexism which may be far more jarring to a modern reader than Victorian predictions of future technology. Indeed the predictions of technology seem far more accurate than some of the future attitudes. By the late 2090s it appears we will have moving walkways, televisions and aeroplanes, and the now merely 'half savage' Negro will unquestioningly follow the orders of his white masters.

In Wells' preface to the 1921 edition, he admits that by that time he is convinced that this future society of a more-or-less literally stratified society crammed into few massive cities with the countryside empty is rather unlikely. He no longer believes that evil capitalists will take over the world, however the "money is power" idea would seem to be more relevant now in a time when companies lobby politicians and some companies have more money than the economies of some entire countries. The future is a strange place in which to live...


* in the [b:Peace & War|879803|Peace & War (The Forever War Omnibus, #1-3)|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179146974s/879803.jpg|865097] Omnibus by [a:Joe Haldeman|12476|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224736362p2/12476.jpg] ( )

Science fiction fans simply looking for an entertaining story will want to skip this book. Its speculations, with a couple of exceptions, are dated -- Wells admitted such only ten years after it was written. The socialist values it expounds make one wonder whether Fabian Wells would have ever been satisfied with capitalism no matter what it did. The characters, again as Wells admitted, are Everyman and an implausible businessman villain.

And yet Wells kept playing with this story over 21 years. It also was probably quite influential on a young Robert Heinlein, a Wells admirer. (It has moving roadways amongst other things.)

The story? A man wakes up from a two hundred year coma to find out he's the richest man in the world. The capitalists who run this world hope he'll play along with them, continue to let them run the world using his money. But Sleeper Graham has other ideas and becomes a Socialist messiah to the oppressed.

Students of science fiction's history will recognize a plot with a starting point similar to Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ -- to which Wells gives a nod. They'll also be interested in the understandably wrong predictions about aerial warfare. Students of Wells will definately want to read this, one of his second-tier works.

This book is a particularly good edition because it features a useful afterword noting the many changes Wells made in this story. It was first published as _When the Sleeper Wakes_, an 1899 magazine serial. It was changed for the book publication of the same year and further changed for the 1910 and 1921 editions. ( )

26/12/2007 7:04

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/775

A nineteenth century nonconformist and activisit pulls a Rip Van Winkle, and wakes up a couple of centuries later. He discovers that he is now what he was actually agitating against, and is rather shocked.
Wells was predicting the rise of the megacorporation, among other things, like the use of aeroplanes for travel. Most definitely a criticism of the large corporation way of life.

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/when-sleeper-wakes-h-g-wells.html ( )

It had to happen some time. This is the first book I have ever made a conscious choice to stop reading. Everything moved so slowly, it seemed very disjointed, and I just couldn't bring myself to read more than a few pages at a time. ( )