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The Sleeper Awakes (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780803298187
Edition: Cmv
ISBN: 0803298188
Label: Bison Books
Manufacturer: Bison Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 300
Publication Date: September 01, 2000
Publisher: Bison Books
Studio: Bison Books
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Editorial Review:
The Sleeper Awakes is H. G. Wells's wildly imaginative story of London in the twenty-second century and the man who by accident becomes owner and master of the world. In 1897 a Victorian gentleman falls into a sleep from which he cannot be waked. During his two centuries of slumber he becomes the Sleeper, the most well known and powerful person in the world. All property is bequeathed to the Sleeper to be administered by a Council on his behalf. The common people, increasingly oppressed, view the Sleeper as a mythical liberator whose awakening will free them from misery.
The Sleeper awakes in 2100 to a futuristic London adorned with wondrous technological trappings yet staggering under social injustice and escalating unrest. His awakening sends shock waves throughout London, from the highest meetings of the Council to the workers laboring in factories in the bowels of the city. Daring rescues and villainous treachery abound as workers and capitalists fight desperately for control of the Sleeper.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A foil to Bellamy
Oh, it gets off to the same start as "Looking Backward". Someone mysteriously falls into a sleep that lasts for two hundred years, and wakes up in a transformed world. After that, it's a whole different book.
In this case, the sleeper wakes not into a socialist world, but into a world wholly governed by property ownership - his. His original fortune, plus a few others, have ballooned due to compund interest. Currency consists of checks drawn on his account, passed back and forth in ... Read More
Rating:  - The Sleeper Awakes - A True Classic
A deeply burdened insomniac in nineteenth-century Great Britain falls into a great trance for where he does not awaken for 203 years. When he awakens, Graham, as he is known, finds himself in a twisted alternate reality in where laborers (one-third of the population) are treated as scum, where the entire numerical system is now in dozens, and with a hierarchical government, power rests only in the hands of a small dictatorship known as the Grand Council. Also, money has piled up and has been secured ... Read More
Rating:  - Tad Better than Bland
It was all right... just all right. Some of the ideas stated were interesting and even prophetic, like the harnessing of wind power for electricity. Some parts reminded me of Fahrenheit 451.
The greatest disappointment was the ending. I was expecting Wells to use the story's build-up to say something clever and meaningful regarding the state of humanity, along with perhaps some useful suggestions, even if unfeasible. But it just ended in an unsatisfying way, almost as if he suddenly got ... Read More
Rating:  - Not the best of Wells's work...
In 1897 a gentlemen falls asleep to wake up in 2100. In the future he finds himself owner of much of the world as his money, which grew while he slept, was used to take over the world by buying up all businesses and property. Now the "Sleeper" finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between those who have and those who have not.
The characters are bland, the future feels like a false front, like one of those towns used in a Wild West movie, and even after pages and pages of details everything ... Read More
Rating: - Good Edition for Students of Wells and SF History
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 ... Read More
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