The Sleeper Awakes
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian science fiction novel by English writer H. G. Wells, about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London in which he has become the richest man in the world. The main character awakes to see his dreams realised, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities.
Author
When The Sleeper Wakes
Henri Lanos (1859–1929)
United Kingdom
English
1899, 1910 (at Wikisource: with 1921 preface)
329 (1899), 288 (1910)
PR5774 .S57 1910[1]
The text published as The Sleeper Awakes in 1910 is a revised version of the novel When the Sleeper Wakes, which was published as a serial, then as a book, in 1899. The 2004 Project Gutenberg title page displays on four lines that suggest a subtitle: The Sleeper Awakes; A Revised Edition of “When the Sleeper Wakes”; By H. G. Wells; 1899.[2] Library of Congress Catalog uses the subtitle.[1]
Publication history[edit]
When the Sleeper Wakes was originally published as a serial in The Graphic (London)[3] and Harper's Weekly (New York),[4] with illustrations by Henri Lanos.[5] Both editions appeared in the first 18 issues of 1899, with Saturday dates 7 January to 5 May.[3][4]
When the book was about to be reprinted again, Wells used this opportunity "to make a number of excisions and alterations", and changed its title to The Sleeper Awakes. As he explains in the preface of the 1910 edition, he was overworked and wrote under considerable pressure when he authored the original version simultaneously with another novel called Love and Mr. Lewisham, in addition to his journalistic obligations. Before going on a "badly needed holiday" to Italy, he felt he had to complete one of the two novels, and so rushed the ending on When the Sleeper Wakes just to finish it, hoping to return to it when he came back to England and before it went into print. But when he got home he fell seriously ill, and after forcing himself to complete Love and Mr. Lewisham, he never got the chance to do any rewriting of When the Sleeper Wakes before it was published.
What Wells disliked about it was the construction of the story and the rushed latter part. However, as so many years had passed, Wells claimed he could no longer identify with his younger self. As such, the work felt too remote for him to do any significant reconstruction. Instead he played the role of the "editorial elder brother" and cut some passages that felt redundant, improved certain "clumsy phrases and repetitions", straightened out some ambivalences at the end, and removed all signs of any love interest between characters.[2] In the 1910 edition Wells also brought the ‘flying machines’ up to date.
The short story "A Story of the Days To Come" (1897) is a forerunner of the novel, being a tale set within the same future society.
Themes[edit]
Themes include socialism; the betrayal of revolution; and how an elite can manipulate a population both by oppression and impoverishment on the one hand, and by the use of technology and provision of pleasure on the other. In this respect, the book has elements explored later both in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
Reception[edit]
Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said of The Sleeper Awakes despite the "impossibly timid" and outdated science, "The worth of the story lies in its human values… This is 'Young Wells' at his non-Utopian best".[6]
Proposed film[edit]
In the late 1960s, George Pal wanted to make a film of the novel. He heard American International Pictures had the rights and offered to buy it from them. They invited him to make the film for them. However, no film resulted.[7]
Influence[edit]
Aspects of the novel's storyline are similar to the plot of the Woody Allen 1973 film Sleeper.[8]
Pulp writer Harry Stephen Keeler took the idea further in a 1914 story called "John Jones' Dollar", in which a solar system's economy is built around a single silver dollar left to accumulate until the year 2921 to the "astounding" sum of $6.3 trillion, financing an interplanetary socialist paradise.
It is often claimed that Buck Rogers was inspired by this story.
The Futurama episode "A Fishful of Dollars" is loosely based upon Wells's novel. The main character Philip J. Fry, who was cryogenically frozen and revived in the 31st Century, discovers that his bank account has continued to accrue interest over the course of a thousand years.
