When the Sleeper Walks

by H.G. Wells

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. The novel is a rewritten version of When the Sleeper Wakes, a story by Wells that was serialised between 1898 and 1899.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Classics, Dystopia, Time Travel, 19th Century, Fantasy

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.G.Wells is more interested here in preaching about Socialism and its supposed benefits than providing the reader with a plot that tells a story. The year is 2102 a man Graham wakes after sleeping since 1899 caused by sickness but he lacks rest all through the rather inconherent scifi narrative a famous well respected novel it's not.If you're looking for another War of the Worlds or The Time Machine you'll be very disappointed. The author is trying to make this political fictional Utopia seem delicious however he can't.The future seems quite bleak like one big city with convayer belts used by all which dominate the surrounding scene of 30 million folks inhabiting London few in the rural areas . As the happy rich live in tall buildings with the depressed poor more slave than free suffer. Revolution breaks out and the sleeper becomes the clueless puppet leader.Troubles everywhere but Graham is in the dark , who are the good guys ? To be honest Mr. Wells guesses of the future were quite wrong by miles, primitive small toy like airplanes flying above as they ...
dominate the skies , freedom is nowhere foumd, people oppressed not a good place to be in . Mild Graham's a fish out of water to be sure wants to help them but lacks courage he was in his time a man lacking inertia, a mind full of turmoil. Until he meets a strong girl Helen, strangely the niece of Ostog the new dictator and all he cares about is raw power , he also likes the gifts a few trinkets would be nice too, the typical tyrant with a soft face. The book could have been fun and enjoyable if the writer wanted, instead of spreading his thoughts to the public that just did not like the message and hoped for an exciting look into what would be , not some paradise which never could exist.For fans only, others be warned. Maybe some different kinds of characters and stories for the adventurous would have suffice their needs.But I doubt it...the reason this is obscure and deserves to be. A sermon dressed to seem a novel.

[David Sarkies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wells' Dystopian Vision
13 July 2016

When I started reading Jules Verne a number of years back I became increasingly interested in some of these pioneers of the science-fiction genre, and while many of us have heard of Wells' more well known books, after digging around the internet I discovered that there were quite a few other books that he had written that I was particularly interested in, especially the ones where he writes about the possibility of flight and how disruptive a technology it would become. Okay, The War in the Air is still sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, however since it had been a while since I had read a Wells book I decided to grab this one.

Sure, I knew a little about this book – namely a man went to sleep and woke up two hundred years in the future to discover that, not surprisingly, everything had changed. I guess the thing that attracted me to this book was what Wells' vision of the future would be. Mind you, it is not his only foray into this speculative realm, since he also does it in The Time Machine and The Shape of Things to Come. Still, I do have this interest to try and see how visionary Wells, and other writers, really were.

As it turns it – quite so. In fact this book reads very much like the more famous dystopian visions of our age, such as 1984 and A Brave New World. In fact there are quite a few things in this book that as I was reading it made me wonder if he had actually had a crystal ball and looked into the 20th Century. For instance we have the working class who earn only enough to make it from day to day, which seems to be where the working class of this era is quickly heading, while the wealthy are able to spend their lives in pleasure domes and when they either get board, or run out of money, they can then euthanise themselves. What is also quite interesting is how the working classes are kept in line through something that is reminiscent of modern television, or even the internet – otherwise known as 'The Babble'.

The story goes that Graham suffers from insomnia, so he undergoes a treatment that allows him to sleep. Unfortunately he oversleeps – by a long shot. It sort of reminds me of Ash in the alternate ending of Armies of Darkness (which I actually saw once, and was really annoyed when I bought the DVD and it didn't include it in the special features, not that the DVD actually had any special features).



As it turns out, Graham has become some sort of legend – the sleeper – namely because when he went to sleep he had some money saved in the bank, but over two hundred years it grew thanks to compound interest, to the point where he had so much that he could literally buy everything on the Earth. Okay, he didn't do that, namely because he was asleep, however a trust was appointed to look after this money, and as the money grew they used to to pretty much take control of the world. However, they didn't count on him waking up, so they decided to lock him up, which doesn't get them far because he escapes and meets a chap named Ostrog who, with Graham's help, overthrows the trustees (which are now known as The White Council), installs Graham as a figure head, and takes control of the world.

Mind you, he doesn't last all that long because the people once again revolt, but I won't spoil the ending by saying any more. However, what I will mention is this idea of money compounding over hundreds of years. In fact Futurama did an episode where Fry had discovered that he was broke, however remembered that he had some money in a bank account – a measley 93c, back in 2000, and decided to see if he could withdraw some, only to discover that he was now a billionaire. That started me thinking, so I found a compound interest calculator on the internet, plugged in the numbers, and low and behold:



For those unable to read it the figure comes to just under nine billion dollars (at 2.3% interest a year).

Anyway, I could probably write a lot more on some of the ideas that came out of this book, however I might leave it for a blog post down the track, particularly since there is actually a lot I could write. However, I should mention that it is interesting how people like Wells viewed the future, particularly since prior to him writers never actually seemed to be all that concerned with speculating as to how society would turn out – rather they seemed to write about society as it was then, and while writers like Bentham, Marx, and Rousseau did write social commentaries, they only did so to address the problems that faced society at the time as opposed to attempting to predict what would come to pass in the future. What we have with authors such as Verne and Wells is the idea to not look at society now, but where society is heading, both technologically and socially.

Some might suggest that it was because the world was starting to see a rapid change with technology, but technology had been progressing for hundreds of years. However, it could also have a lot to do with industrialisation because what was happening was that the traditional agrarian society was suddenly being disrupted. Up until that time a bulk of the population lived in the country and cities only existed as centres of trade and administration. Industrialisation not only meant that more could be made quicker, and cheaper, but also labour was needed where the factories were as opposed to where the farms were – and the factories tended to be located near the coast, which is where a bulk of the cities existed, and grew. Even in Wells' age society went from travelling as fast as a horse could run, or the wind blow, to travelling as fast as an engine could spin its wheels – in fact the world was changing right before their eyes as the internal combustion engine first made sailing ships obsolete, and then the good old horse and buggy.

Yet writers such as Wells, and later Orwell, could see a dark side to progress, as they both portrayed in books that are remarkably similar. However, by the time Orwell was writing 1984 a new technology was appearing in the form of the television, which had built upon the foundations of film and radio before that, and television ushered in a new age of thought-control through what is know known as the mass media.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.G. wrote this novel at warp speed nine, as evidenced by the bluntest ending ever written and presented in a Penguin Classic. His dystopian vision here, however, is one of the most influential in SF and beyond. Needless, we’d have no 1984 if it wasn’t for this patchy, overtly racist, but workmanlike tale. Respect to Herb.

[Isla Laurent · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the Sleeper Wakes is H. G. Wells's vision of life in the year 2100, written in 1899 mind you. His descriptions of technology have the same problem as many such works do. One can easily imagine larger, faster, more efficient versions of contemporary technology; what cannot be predicted are the advances that take us into a completely different direction. So here we have large lighter than air ships (like blimps) but no heavier than air flight - no jet engines, no speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, and so on.

Predictions of future politics can be much more accurate; despite technology people are people, and tend to act in similar ways throughout history. It is interesting to read Wells' vision of society in 2100 and see echoes in our current situation. Despite the lack of looking into the future of technology, it's a great story.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was Wells's revised version of When the Sleeper Wakes, which was serialized and published in book form in 1899; the version I read was the 2005 Penguin Classics edition, with a Foreword by Patrick Parrinder and useful notes by my old friend Andy Sawyer of the Foundation.

On a walking holiday in northern Cornwall, a man called Isbister comes across another, Graham, in great distress: Graham has been suffering insomnia for days. Isbister takes him back home, but before he can summon medical attention Graham falls asleep at last, and indeed into a coma -- and what a coma! It lasts for two centuries. When Graham finally wakes it is into an almost unrecognizable world. In due course he finds that he essentially owns this world: at the time he fell asleep he had money of his own, and both his richer solicitor cousin and Isbister had left their fortunes to his somnolent form; compound interest has done the rest. In the modern age, a Council has for some time been ruling the world tyrannously, supposedly on his behalf, while his motionless form has been on display to a public who've come to regard him as a sort of messiah-in-waiting. It is of course a profound disaster to the Council that he has woken, and they try to keep the fact a secret from the people, while preparing to dispose of this inconvenient waker. But Graham is rescued and a successful revolution mounted by the demagogue Ostrog, a supposed Man of the People who's soon revealed as having intentions just as despotic as those of the ousted Council. (Ostrog's explanation of his behaviour includes a passage [p167:] that could have come straight out of Orwell's Animal Farm.) As Graham is taken on carefully guide tours of a domed and massively bloated London, and as he becomes aware of Ostrog's perfidy, his natural 19th-century radicalism begins to stir itself; and finally, having learned how to pilot one of these newfangled flying-machine things as a hobby, he takes to the air in an attempt to destroy  the demagogue as a second rebellion, this time genuinely of the people, seems on the brink of success . . .

According to the editorial material, in the years leading up to 1910 Wells had intended to write a sort of self-parody, but instead came out with this revision of his earlier novel. Signs of the self-parodic intention persist, as when Isbister and Graham's cousin discuss the sleeping man (after Isbister has [p21:] described the comatose Graham as "like a seat vacant and marked 'engaged'" -- beautiful!):

"He was a fanatical Radical -- a Socialist -- or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic -- flighty -- undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote -- a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is to realize how full the world is of unanticipated things." (p24)

I would say this must certainly be a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait by the same H.G. Wells who couldn't resist adding a snooty little footnote to the opening of Chapter 24, "While the Aeroplanes Were Coming":

These chapters were written fifteen years before there was any fighting in the air, and eleven before there was an aeroplane in the air.

Obviously Graham has difficulty acclimatizing himself to this future world. There's a sense throughout that, even as he flees terrified through a roiling nighttime mob or takes to the skies in a monoplane, he's not really a part of the activities despite the fact that he's in the midst of them. It's as if he hasn't quite left the world of sleep and is experiencing all this in the manner of a dream. To be honest, I found this a problem with the book: it's very difficult to become involved in the action when the protagonist seems incapable of doing likewise. Even when the door opens for Graham to the possibility of romance, with the attractive revolutionary Helen Wotton, Graham closes it again: his duty must come first.

Perhaps he's right to heed duty's call, for this is a ruthless and, for the powerful, self-indulgent age he's found himself in, with a lot of wrongs to be righted. The social structure has become enormously stratified, with the powerful elite having almost everything they could desire, the middle classes having just enough to keep them from riot, and a vast underclass who have nothing to live for and who are kept viciously downtrodden by social structures and no fewer than fourteen different categories of police. As example of the exploitation of these folk, Graham visits a factory (pp194-5) and finds many of the workers suffer a horribly disfiguring disease (the descriptions like that of phossy jaw) because of a fashionable purple dye they're handling. When he brings this to the attention of his companion, he gets a chilling response:

"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple," said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."

Some of Wells's predictions are successful: in particular, he anticipates the development of windmills as a significant power source. His footnoted prediction of aircraft dogfighting is not nearly the success one might think, in that, far from trying to shoot each other down, the pilots use collision as a tool, the trick being to seriously disable your opponent while doing your own plane only tolerable damage. There's an interesting example of a prediction being since realized . . . but only in science fiction. Wells envisaged roadways whose surfaces moved to convey people from place to place; the central strips are slow-moving, but those strips further out are progressively more rapid, so that you can climb aboard the system near the centre and step easily from one strip to the next until you reach the fastest-moving strip of all, which is the one where you stay for the bulk of your journey. Around now, you'll doubtless be leaping from your seat shouting about Robert Heinlein's 1940 story "The Roads Must Roll" . . . Another prediction in this only-in-sf category is that the world will be using the duodecimal system. But then we find this:

But now he saw what had indeed been manifest from the first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer an aggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousand classes of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres, markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises [. . .:] People [of the middle classes:] had their sleeping rooms, with, it might be, antechambers [. . .:] and for the rest they lived much as many people had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days, eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of public resort [. . .:] (p177)

I know plenty of people whose urban lifestyles are not so very dissimilar from Wells's description.

The extended travelogue-style sections, where we're supposed to boggle at the way world looks now, are pretty dull stuff -- and I suspect were so even when the book was first published. There's some appalling sexism in the book, but I suppose one can write that off as being a product of Wells's era. What I cannot excuse similarly is the racism. By the time Wells was writing, there were plenty of his compatriots who'd achieved sufficient enlightenment to realize that ghastly racial stereotypes like the ones in this novel -- the "subject races" (p172) are "fine loyal brutes" (p167) -- were purest bunkum and utterly loathsome. It gets worse. The final straw -- a major plot point -- that makes Graham resort to launching an uprising against Ostrog is that the latter plans to import "Negro police" to quell the rioting populace; not only are the "Negroes" prone to committing the kind of atrocities no white man would countenance, but "White men must be mastered by white men" (p202), and so forth. It's all quite unforgivable, and my estimation of Wells has plummeted.

[Christopher (Donut) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because of Orwell's discussion of it in The Road to Wigan Pier.
That Orwell called it The Sleeper Awakes and not When the Sleeper Wakes may be why I sought out the rarer version (on manybooks)- There is a preface in which Wells virtually disclaims the book. He saw its flaws, but was in no frame of mind to re-work it except for the romance between the sleeper and a 23rd-Century girl.

The real problem is the exposition. There is all kinds of hustle bustle, not very clearly depicted, before any explanation of what is going on is made. At no point is it clearly explained that the Sleeper has, through compound interest, become the sole ruler of the world.

Two stars is generous. At no point did I enjoy reading this, to my surprise, because I had read The Time Machine and thought it ripping.

The one interesting and timely aspect of this story, was the pseudo-revolution which one faction of world controllers has used to overthrow the rest of the board. That the forces unleashed ultimately undermine the entire civilization is worth pondering.



Oh, yes, the influence on the great SF film Metropolis (1927) is undeniable.

[Petra · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.G. Well's look at the future is interesting, as we are the future he tries to image.
Graham wakes from a deep sleep 200 years in the future, in the 2090's; not far from where we are today. He finds himself the King of the World, due to a combination of his money, inheritances from rich relatives & friends and 200-years worth of compound interest. In a sense, he's become almost a Messiah-like figure to the people of the future, with them filing by his sleeping body. Those who rule his Fortune are not too happy to hear that he's awoken.
The story is both vague and detailed as Wells tries to imagine what the World will become. The vague sections are a bit slow as Wells tries to bring action to a place he cannot truly foresee.
In some instances he's gotten pretty close. There are moving sidewalks (of various speeds) to get people around, windmills for energy, smoking has almost been eliminated, the Eiffel Tower still stands and he imagined a form of aerial combat (his planes still have propellers, though).
I was surprised at the amount of racism in the book. Also, although he forsees Working Women, he sees them as flat-chested and without femininity. Education, for the most part, is taught by rote using hypnosis, which is the main form of teaching used in the Society.
An interesting look at the future which, for us, is almost here.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man falls asleep, outlives all his annoying neighbors in the process and wakes up in a future filled with amazing technology where life is blissfully easy. Oh, and now he owns the whole world. How is this book not titled "The Best Day Ever"?

As it turns out, Wells had other concerns on his mind. The basic idea here isn't that far removed from the old tale of Rip Van Winkle, where a man displaced in time lets his experiences be extended into metaphor for the differences between those different times, letting the native culture shock drive the plot and turning the novel into part travelogue and part commentary. It's a useful device that taps into those unconscious curious longings we all have . . . who wouldn't want a chance to see how the far future turns out? Nowadays we have literary devices like time travel machines and suspended animation but in these days with SF in its infancy you didn't have all the cliches of the genre to just pick up and use when the need arose. You had to invent them. Having done a bit about a time machine already, he decided to take a different tactic and go with the magical realism route. Thus, Graham simply gets very tired and falls asleep for a very long time.

That's when the fun begins. Feeling extraordinarily rested, Graham learns that not only has he become a sort of legendary figure to the masses for his amazing ability to . . . sleep (Tilda Swinton and your performance art exhibit, eat your heart out!) but thanks to the magic of compound interest and the fact that no one ever thought he would wake up, he basically owns ninety percent of everything in the whole world, making him a true master of the Earth. Very quickly, he watches as the current Council gets overthrown and replaced and thinks that finally everything will be really swell. Except . . . maybe it isn't.

People looking for a strict measure of science may have to go look elsewhere for their daily dose of their evidence based writing, the device to get Graham to the future is clearly a device and there's little time spent on the way or the how of it working. Everyone seems equally mystified and in that light the novel isn't that much different from the methods of Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". But as I said, Wells' interest doesn't quite lie there as he sidesteps the whole issue and instead focuses on what matters here: the future. And what a future. Given a chance to depict how the world might look two hundred years from now, Wells manages to be off by a hundred years and creates a world that doesn't feel much different than ours, except in the small details. The clustering of architecture, swooping and soaring and confining, the moving sidewalks, video screens and perhaps most interesting of all, flying machines . . . even as Graham experiences the constant shock of the new, there's quite a bit here that would look familiar to us. Even touches like the language fracturing slightly into newer dialects feels right. Detached from history, everything feels new and we get some of Graham's curious delight but at the same time the ring of familiarity is so distinct that it's a grounded sense of wonder. We see through new eyes what we've been seeing already, but we aren't dazzled, we're reassured. And maybe . . . hopeful, that somehow this future will turn out right.

Not quite. Wells isn't interested in writing a dippy utopia where everyone holds hands and praises the sunshine. What impresses here is the urgency that creeps into the text, an intensity missing from some of his other novels. Wells apparently wasn't completely happy with the end result, feeling it was written too quickly, but that speed often makes the writing feel feverish in parts, his Victorian poise pulling back slightly and replaced by a need to get this down as purely as he can before he loses it, before it's too late. That calm tone that makes everything believable is still apparent and adds much to making this all go down easily, but it all seems taken up a notch, your favorite record set to the wrong speed. Perry Como putting on punk clothes and telling you that now he's getting real. While entertaining novels like "The First Men on the Moon" came down to romping around with funny moon people, stripping the novel of outer space aliens entirely turns the future into one big alien force. Graham has to navigate a maze without walls, where all the rules have changed and learns quickly that you can be Master of the world and still not in control.

For the most part, Wells' future is even handed, possessed of marvels and horrors in equal measure, although Wells is clearly in commentary mode as he gives us scene after scene of the lives of the working class in London, laboring under giant dirty machines and scrabbling about for whatever tainted glimmers they can find before sweet and welcome oblivion claims them. For these people, any change is akin to "meet the old boss, same as the new boss" and Wells' point seems to be that just because we get fancier stuff, it doesn't mean that life gets better. Not for everyone and when the realization hits the plot kicks back into gear. This may indeed have the most action of any Wells novel I've read, with plenty of fists being thrown and battles being fought, along with perhaps the best depiction of dogfighting you'll ever read before airplanes were invented. And the ending itself is heartstopping, so abrupt you're wondering if you're missing a page but perfect in its way, realizing when you've told enough, you don't need to go any further.

It's not perfect, of course. It does betray some of its hasty writing in the middle portions, where the plot sags slightly as the book becomes more interested in showing us all the details of this new world. Once the plot ramps up again, all in forgiven but if you're not that interested in the scenery it could be slow going. It's also definitely a product of its time, showing an attitude toward "Negros" that would seem bizarre to us today and even stranger considering it takes place in the future (basically the whole race is treated as members of a brutish police force and it's implied its all they're cut out for). But as SF adventure, as dire warning, as a advertisement for the benefits of a great nap it ranks up with books that are being produced today. Considering how many of its ideas were later poached for works that are varying degrees of SF (Woody Allen's "Sleeper" comes to mind immediately), its central ideas still resonate and the best way to treat it is not as a historical artifact of a long-ago time but a full-blooded novel in its own right, still vital even now.

[Leothefox · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's odd to say that I'd wanted to read this book for almost twenty years and in surprising ways it did not disappoint. Wells,pioneer of science fiction that he was, pulled out all the stops here. There's action, warfare, loads of colorful future stuff, betrayal, romance, and politics.

The plot concerns a 19th century insomniac named Graham who ends up sleeping for 200 years only to wake and discover he owns half the world. He's a fish out of water and he's odd circumsatnces result in people trying to use him or destroy him for their own ends.

22nd century London is enclosed, massive, and disorganized. We follow a bewildered protagonist through a flood of wonders and horrors, which is probably the best way for a writer to portray a fictional society.

Naturally its prophetic and has a lot to say about the degradation of social ideals and the lust for power as a destructive force. Being a 19th century work, ideas about race and gender are radically different, but framed through the lens of a protagonist who is himself an anachronism, it all comes off with a kind of logic.

It's easy to talk about this as an inspiration for stuff like “Metropolis”, “1984”, or even Buck Rogers, but it's a vivid piece of writing without all that. I'm delighted to have read this book, and you ought to do the same.

[Burçak Sultan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ana karakter olan Graham 200 yüzyıldan fazla uyur ve uyandığında dünyanın en zengin adamı ve sahibi olmuştur. Konusu güzel ama alıştığım distopyalar gibi aksiyon ağırlıklı değil daha çok siyasi dokundurmalıydı.. Aksiyon da vardı yoktu diyemem.. devrimler vs. kitapta vardı bayağı... ama daha çok laf dokundurmalı bir kitaptı :))

[Kozmokitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yazıldığı döneme göre çok çok başarılı bulduğum bir kitap. Kİtabın sonu beni biraz hayal kırıklığına uğratsa da herkesin okuması gereken bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum.

[Alex Storer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of that old dystopian vision of the future; the hierarchical, sterile society, the vast future cityscapes and all manner of things envisioned by a plethora of authors such as Arthur C Clarke, Aldus Huxley, Philip K Dick and of course HG Wells.

The Sleeper Awakes tells the story of an ordinary man called Graham, propelled into the most extraordinary circumstance, after falling into a 203-year sleep-like trance in late 19th Century Cornwall.

Having been a public wonder, often “on display” during those two centuries, Graham finally awakens one day to discover a different world, where he soon learns that he's the richest man on Earth and owner of everything. But his world, culture and dreams are long gone, replaced by an oppressed slave nation and twisted aristocracy - all funded by his own wealth. And thus begins his struggle, as Master, to restore order and values and serve his people, against constantly opposing forces.

Wells revised his original 1889 novel in 1910, making minor edits and changes to improve the reading and bring a few technological things up to date. Despite this, he still managed to write about air combat fifteen years before any of our planes engaged in warfare. That is one particular example of Wells' intuitive foresight – his vision of technology is quite amazing, from various travel machines to audiovisual technology, all of which, combined with his enormous and daunting vision of a heavily built-up, wind-powered future London (complete with moving roadways), is absolutely fascinating.

It always astounds me to read something so visionary, so advanced, written so many decades before the advent of the technology that we take for granted daily.

The Sleeper Awakes constantly surprised me, as I became increasingly absorbed in this fascinating but unpleasant future. It’s the kind of book that leaves you yearning for more and wanting to further the adventure – and at the same time, completely sympathising with Graham. It's abrupt and sudden ending - even if during the climactic battle - seems unusual for Wells, and although he wrote his own thoughts on Graham's fate in 1924, to the reader, the story is left open in a slightly frustrating way, after such a huge journey.

I’m surprised that no big-screen adaptations have been attempted of this seemingly seldom-mentioned novel. Then again, maybe only with the technology of today, would film-makers be able to even begin to realise the sheer scale of Wells’ vision. Or maybe, as with The City and the Stars, perhaps The Sleeper Awakes is one tale best left in book form, and left intact rather than ravaged by safe Hollywood direction or other such things that undermine the integrity of the story.

The Sleeper Awakes is one book I’m glad to have read and certainly look forward to reading again. It inspired me to illustrate one of the pivotal scenes in the book, which you can see here: http://thelightdream.net/art/science_...

[Gregg Wingo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the last few years publishers have been dragging public domain works off the shelves, blowing the dust off classics, and selling them to travelers on the cheap. H. G. Wells, the father of English Science Fiction, has not been left out. This work is clearly - like all good SF - a critique of the author's society. Wells was like Verne firmly rooted in extrapolation of science or what would one day be called hard science fiction but they were also focused on it effects on society and the nature of man. While this work is a wish fulfillment novel it is also a dystopian work that lays the groundwork for Huxley's "Brave New World", Asimov's "Caves of Steel", Woody Allen's "Sleeper", and Gibson's Sprawl trilogy.

In our period of late capitalism we share much in common with the Victorian Era: globalization, technological revolution, Western hegemony, and unrestrained capitalism to name just a few. This allows us to gain insight from Wells' critique of his own epoch such as this following passage:

"Any organisation that became big enough to influence the polls became complex enough to be undermined, broken up, or bought outright by capable rich men. Socialist and Popular, Reactionary and Purity Parties were all at last mere Stock Exchange counters, selling their principles to pay for their electioneering. And the great concern of the rich was naturally to keep property intact, the board clear for the game of trade...The whole world was exploited, a battlefield of business; and financial convulsions, the scourge of currency manipulation, tariff wars..."

Reading such jarring passages provides a reflection on our own hubris and respect for one who could accurately envision the nature of man over a two-hundred-year span of time. There is much to be found here for those of us who have not read Wells since childhood and even then not deeply.

[Jinx:The:Poet {the LiteraryWanderer & WordRoamer} · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey.”

The Sleeper Awakes (1910) is a dystopian, science fiction novel by H.G. Wells. It is about a man, named Graham, who is an insomniac living in London, in the year 1897, and decides to take drugs to cure his worsening insomnia but ends up falling into a deep coma. He then sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, in the year 2100, where he has become the richest man in the world after inheriting enormous wealth and it being placed into a trust. Over the years, the trustees, also known as the "White Council", have used his wealth to establish a vast political and economic world order. Therefore when Graham wakes, he wakes in a new alternate world, where his dreams have been realised, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities, drastically changed by his own actions.

Although at times outlandish, Wells portrays a very unique dystopian fiction, one that describes an alternate vision of the future, or at least an interesting concept that, in his day, would have been considered brilliant. I must say, that although I enjoyed the book, a few topics were not handled well, even for a fiction Master like Wells. Sometimes you get used to that kind of thing after excessively reading Victorian literature. Offensive things happen, small minded comments will be made, and sometimes these things, when taken with a grain of salt and understanding the limited knowledge of the era, can be overlooked if only to value the topic itself, but for that I lowered my overall rating even though otherwise the book was entertaining and very original.

"There is no liberty save wisdom and self-control.”

[OFFICIAL RATING: 4.5 STARS]

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most as they say "problematic" of that amazing sequence of early Wells novels - very much worth reading for its extraordinary descriptions of a future hypercapitalist, advertising-swamped ultra-urbanism (so much more prescient than his cleaner Fabian utopias), but also disturbing - and atypical for HGW - in its combination of socialism and explicit racism.

[Nesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

H.G. Wells is so smart that it scares me.

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5
This had an interesting premise and story but the writing was sloppy and inconsistent. This was a book more of ideas than characters and I prefer my stories the other way around.

[Epichan · Rating 4 out of 5]

İlk distopya özelliği taşıyan eser. Diğerlerinin aksine farklı bir dünya betimlemiş yazar. Ama her zaman hayran olduğum özelliği ise öngürülerinin çok ileri olması. Kendi yaşadığı zaman içersin de gelecek hakkında çok ileri teknolojileri tasavvur etmiş.

[Odile · Rating 5 out of 5]

“‘And through it all, this destiny was before me,’ he said; ‘this vast inheritance of which I did not dream.’”

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: In this novel, Wells recognizes his debt towards Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887, but does not predict a socialistic world by the year 2100. On the contrary, his world is an anti-democratic plutocracy, which means that Wells saw it as a dystopia, rather than a utopia. In fact, this novel can be considered a first step in the evolution towards the world of the Morlocks and the Eloi, as described in The Time Machine. It also displays considerable white-supremacy racism. On the other hand, his novel The World Set Free, published 14 years later, can be considered a utopia. Apparently, Wells became in those 14 years much more optimistic in his ideas about the evolution of society.

Technical predictions are few and unimaginative. There is a combination of kinematograph (sic) and phonograph, equivalent to television, but in black and white, except for the very rich and powerful. There are airplanes (there were when the novel was written), but they haven't made much progress. Railways have been replaced by automobile traffic and long-distance conveyor belts.

This quote is more to the point: Socialistic and Popular, Reactionary and Purity Parties were at last mere Stock Exchange counters, selling their principles to pay for their electioneering.

There is one prediction made in this novel where Wells hits the target better than in his later work The World Set Free. He says that 200 years later the death rate of little children would have been reduced to 0.5%. In the other novel he says that science will never be able to reduce the baby death toll, which by 1900 was around 20% in the first year of life outside the mother. Today the death rate is about the same while the baby is inside the mother, because they are killed. Wells never predicted this.

In general, what is happening now is so different from what Wells suspected or feared would happen, that I am a little disappointed with the novel. Jules Verne's predictions seem more accurate, although he rarely strayed that far from his time.

SPANISH: En esta novela, Wells reconoce su deuda con [libro:Looking Backward: 2000-1887|296977] de Edward Bellamy, pero no predice un mundo socialista para el año 2100. Al contrario, su mundo es una plutocracia antidemocrática, lo que significa que Wells lo vio como una distopía, más que como una utopía. De hecho, esta novela apunta a ser un primer paso en la evolución hacia el mundo de los Morlock y los Eloi, que describe The Time Machine. También demuestra un racismo de supremacía blanca considerable. En cambio, su novela The World Set Free, publicada 14 años después que esta, sí puede considerarse una utopía. Parece que en esos 14 años Wells pasó a ser mucho más optimista en sus ideas sobre la evolución de la sociedad.

Las predicciones técnicas son pocas y poco imaginativas. Hay una combinación del cinematógrafo y el fonógrafo que equivale a la televisión, pero en blanco y negro, salvo para los muy ricos y poderosos. Hay aviones (ya los había cuando se escribió la novela), pero casi no han avanzado. Los ferrocarriles han sido reemplazados por el tráfico de automóviles y por bandas transportadoras a larga distancia.

Esta cita viene más a cuento: Los partidos Socialista y Popular, Reaccionario y de la Pureza se convirtieron por fin en peones de la Bolsa de Valores y vendieron sus principios para pagar su campaña electoral.

Hay una predicción hecha en esta novela en la que Wells acierta más que en su obra posterior The World Set Free. Dice que en 200 años la tasa de mortalidad de los niños pequeños se habría reducido al 0,5%. En la otra novela afirma que la ciencia nunca podrá reducir la tasa de mortalidad infantil, que en 1900 rondaba el 20% en el primer año de vida fuera del cuerpo de la madre. Hoy la tasa de mortalidad es aproximadamente esa misma mientras el bebé está dentro de la madre, porque los matan. Wells no predijo esto.

En general, lo que está ocurriendo ahora se diferencia tanto de lo que Wells sospechaba o temía que iba a ocurrir, que la novela me ha decepcionado un poco. Las predicciones de Julio Verne me parecen más acertadas, aunque él rara vez se apartaba tanto de su época.

[Orhan Aytekin · Rating 3 out of 5]

9 günlük kitap okuyamama lanetinden kurtulduk çok şükür
Bu abim az uyumuş biraz daha fazla uyumuş versiyonunu Idiocracy filminden izleyebilirsiniz

[Julian Meynell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lesser known work of Wells and not taken as seriously as some of his more well known works. Having read enough Wells, I was not surprised to see that it was considerably better than it is supposed to be. The book belongs to Wells' great period from 1894 to 1901, when Wells managed to anticipate virtually the whole of future science fiction in novels of genius. This work despite its reputation deserves to be in that league, and for instance, is better than the Invisible man.

This book is really the grand-daddy of futuristic dystopias and everything from 1984 to The Hunger Games owes a debt to it. It is a sort of companion piece to the Time Machine with very many of the same concerns. The society described can easily be imagined as the society that would birth the Morlocks and the Eloi. The protagonist is The Sleeper who until the end is very much a typical passive observer Wells' protagonist, although he is the immediate cause of the events of the novel. The sleeper has been in a trance for 200 years and wakes up to find himself the owner of the world through compound interest. There are then a series of revolutions with tension between manipulative exploiters and the socialist masses. The workers are also "the sleeper" and they too "awake."

Wells' chief concern was the conflict between his socialist utopianism and his scientific pessimism. He sees the future as one of potential oppression and Darwanistic operations on the very nature of humanity. This book is very much that. The book is directly about that conflict (as is The Time Machine, First Men in the Moon, and In the Days of the Comet). It is quite subtle, and in this case leans to the optimistic. Wells' is more successful when he leans to the pessimistic, but what some might see as philosophical confusions, are really the expressions of this conflict, which haunted Wells' all his life and is the foundation of his genius.

[Damian · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to read a book that you will show you what a terrible prediction of the future looks like and at the same time experience what it feels like to read a book that was rushed, poorly written and and in no way gripping, The Sleeper Awakes is for you.

I read this book as it is allegedly "the book that inspired 1984". Only a genius like Orwell could be inspired to write something so great by reading something this poor. This is like hearing DaVinci was inspired to paint the Mona Lisa after seeing a dead rat in a gutter. The whole way I was waiting for the dystopian elements that inspired DoubleThink, Big Brother and the other elements of the greatest dystopian novel ever written, but instead I got the Negro Police and a bunch of forgettable barely connected events set in a world almost exactly like the time it was written it with some trite 'futuristic' gimmicks thrown in.

If you are planning on reading this book as a George Orwell or 1984 fan, save your time and read another one of Orwell's fantastic books. There are no redeeming elements in this book that make it worth reading.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of his best - riveting from start to finish.

Of all his prophesies, the most damning is that society remains largely unaltered. For all of man’s technological advances, we still suffer under an ever widening gulf of financial disparity; are the slaves of the Labor Company any different than political prisoners in China making our athletic shoes, or the migrant farm workers in the USA?! It’s a horrible blot on civilization (syphilisation?) that the filthy rich have unfettered influence in Washington, and social programs designed to enrich the lives of the citizen taxpayers (i.e. public education, affordable health care, the arts and environmental protections) are vilified and demonized, and corporate welfare and tax loop holes for multinational conglomerates are championed.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Man, I hated this book. Dry, 90% description (including what little action there was), a protagonist who has everything done for him, and brimming with racism. And then it's over, and I won't spoil the ending as I read it for book club and other people I know are reading it, but it was a *What?!? That was it?!?* sort of ending.
I enjoyed the first chapter. After that, I just kept checking the percentage complete and wondering why it wasn't higher.

[Akrabar · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most futuristic and stunning novel by one of the greatest science fiction writers.

[sabisteb aka callisto · Rating 3 out of 5]

1897 lernt Graham den Künsteler Mr. Isbister kennen. Graham geht es nicht gut, er leidet unter Schlaflosigkeit. Isbister nimmt ihn mit zu sich nach Hause, wo Graham in eine Art Trace verfällt, aus der er nicht mehr aufwacht. Isbister übernimmt die Verwaltung von Grahams Vermögen und Grahams Pflege und sorgt dafür, dass man sich auch nach seinem eigenen Tod um Graham kümmert.

“I’ve understood,” said Isbister after a pause, “that he had some moderate property of his own?”
“That is so,” said Warming. He coughed primly. “As it happens—have charge of it.”
“Ah!” Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: “No doubt—his keep here is not expensive—no dobt it will have improved—accumulated?”
“It has. He will wake up very much better off—if he wakes—than when he slept.”

Man kann nur schätzen, wie groß Grahams Vermögen 1897 war. Eine interessante Variation des Jesuspfennig, eines klassischen Beispiels, dass vor den Folgen des Zinseszinssystems warnen soll. Als Graham nämlich 2100 aufwacht hat sich sein „moderate property“ in den Händen seiner „Verwalter“ durch Zinseszins und Investitionen so weit vermehrt, dass er der Herrscher der Welt ist.

"Money attracts money—and twelve brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. They grew—they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the Sleeper's estate under double names and company titles and all that.”

In dieser Welt ist nun genau das zu beobachten, was derzeitig 2016 bereits passiert. Wenn Reichtum in wenigen Händen akkumuliert, verarmt die Bevölkerung und wird zu Sklaven der Besitzer der Produktionsmittel.

“In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms—when your waking came. “ Neoliberalismus in Reinstform. Endless opportunities... to fail.
Die Arbeiter strömen dahin, wo die Arbeit ist: In die Städte. Das Land verarmt, es gibt keine Ärzte und kein Infrastruktur mehr auf dem Lande, so dass immer mehr Menschen gezwungen sind, in den Städten ihr Auskommen zu suchen, während immer weniger riesige Latifundien bewirtschaften.
“And the big towns grew. They drew the worker with the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the employer with their suggestion of an infinite ocean of labour."
Dadurch verliert die Arbeitskraft an Wert. Die Menschen müssen sich für Kost und Logie an die Labour Departments verkaufen, eine Knechtschaft, der kaum einer entkommen kann, aber zumindest ist für sie gesorgt bis sie ihre Zukunft so demotivierend finden, dass sie in eine Freudenstadt gehen und sich euthanasieren lassen.

You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."
"Worse. That is what I want you to know, what I want you to see. I know you do not know. They will keep things from you [...] But you have noticed men and women and children in pale blue canvas, with thin yellow faces and dull eyes?"
[...] "They are the slaves—your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour Department you own."
[…] All the rich, all the influential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries for granted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease by their degradation.
[…]"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It wants but a word—but a word from you—to bring them all together. Even the middle sort of people are restless—unhappy.

Ostrog nutzt diese Unzufriedenheit, um mit Hilfe der Massen den Rat, der in Grahams Namen regiert zu stürzen: "Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up—remain surging. There was scarcely enough fighting…. We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread."

Und so sieht unsere Welt, die USA und auch Europa derzeitig aus: “Wealth now is power as it never was power before—it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth. On your behalf…. You must accept facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler! Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has only one believer—a multiplex, silly one—the man in the Crowd."

Und die Politiker wundern sich, warum die Menschen aufbegehren.


„The Sleeper Awakes“ ist keines von Wells bekannteren Büchern, ich kann durchaus verstehen warum, obwohl das Thema durchaus interessant ist und gute Ansätze vorhanden sind. Die politischen Voraussagen sind treffend und zynisch in ihrer neoliberalen Menschenverachtung, welche die heutige Politik tatsächlich beherrscht. Aber das ist auch alles, was das Buch interessant macht, die Dystopischen Vorhersagen, denn das ist auch alles, um was es in dem Buch geht. Es gibt kaum bis keine Handlung. Alles ist world building und Beschreibung von sozialen und gesellschaftlichen Strukturen. Entweder durch Dialoge oder durch den Allwissenden Erzähler. Beschreibungen über Beschreibungen. Seitenweise. Mehrere Kapitel lang nur Beschreibungen.
Das zieht sich, das ist dröge zu lesen. Die Charaktere sind flach und entwickeln sich nicht. Es wird nur schwarz/weiß gemalt. Böser Zwölferrat, böser Ostrog, heiliger Sleeper, der versucht die Welt zu verstehen. Einige der technsichen Errungenschaften sind treffend vorhergesehen, das Buch fühlt sich dadurch tatsächlich noch modern an und macht nicht den Eindruck in den naughty nineties geschrieben zu sein.

Dennoch, so genial die politischen Vorhersagen die aktuelle Situation 2016 vorhersagen (5 Sterne) kann ich für die langweilige, vorhersagbare, sich zäh wie Kaugummi ziehende Geschichte nur 1-2 Sterne geben. 6/2=3 Sterne insgesamt.

[ReadBecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super weird how relevant and timely a Victorian/gilded age political rebellion sci fi novel hits right now... Oh, companies have consolidated and monopolized all power till it basically is held in the hands of a couple people, minimizing the rest of society to their use for labor and oppressing them hopelessly so that even revolution just means oppression by someone else? Totally unrealistic, right.

[Kristy Buzbee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wells is hit-or-miss with me. I'm an avid sci-fi fan so I certainly can't just pass him by, but he's not always a smashing success to me. I really like War of the Worlds, but The Invisible Man and The Time Machine were both pretty lackluster. The plot of The Sleeper Awakes caught my interest, so I bought it - the Penguin Classics edition, which I recommend for anyone reading Wells. The Penguin Classics editions of his work has footnotes for all the weird words and references he uses that modern day readers might not understand. It really helped with my enjoyment of the story, because I don't know about you guys, but I'm very bad about looking up words or names that I don't recognize. I just skim past them. Footnotes are win. I might give The Time Machine another try if I can get it in this edition.

All right, anyway, technical details aside. The story starts in England, around 1895-ish. A fellow walking along the beach comes across a distressed man by the name of Graham, who says he can't sleep and hasn't slept in six days. He's been participating in some sort of experimental drug...something. The insomniac is pondering suicide, so the beach-walker takes him back to his house. That evening, Graham falls into a coma, something like suspended animation. Cut to 203 years later. Graham wakes up to find himself encased in glass, in some manner of museum. Turns out, while he was sleeping, his assets were invested repeatedly and he is now the richest and most powerful man on earth - the world is run by the Council, who acts "on behalf of the Sleeper" and runs the world in his name. It is a brutal hierarchy with a few extremely rich aristocrats at the top, and the majority of humanity living in poverty and pseudo-slavery. The only hope of the common people? That one day the Sleeper will wake up and use his fortune and power to save them.

Fascinating? Oh yesh. Like I said, I can't resist a plot like that. Wells did everything right - he didn't play up the generic parts of a plotline like this, but made it as complicated as it would truly be. It's amazing to read about the poor Graham, who knows absolutely nothing about anything in this new world, but is expected to finally fix it. Also, there are not Good Guys and Bad Guys - Graham has no way of telling who wants what and what's the best choice; everyone's in it for themselves. It reminds me of the Gemma Doyle books, where she couldn't actually trust anyone - books often have the standard person or group who is Good, and all the main character needs to do is listen to them and all will be well. There's no one like that here. Everyone wants him to do what's best for them, and that's different in every case. It's pretty intense. One thing though - as with many older books, you have to be ready for the various racist and sexist moments that come up. Wells doesn't really say anything too bad; I've read that he was a proponent of gender equality and equal rights for all, but...well, cultural prejudices are hard to overcome entirely.

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sleeper Awakes is one of H. G. Wells’ lesser known science fiction novels, and a rather odd dystopian tale.

In 1897 a man named Graham is having trouble sleeping. When he finally does fall asleep it’s for a very long time indeed. 203 years, in fact. When he awakes he discovers that his long sleep has made him a figure of vast importance.

It’s not just that his own not inconsiderable personal fortune has grown like Topsy. He has been left as heir to the fortune, the very very large fortune, of an engineer named Warming. He has accumulated such vast wealth that he is now in practice the owner of the world. The fact that he was sleeping and was not expected to awake was of course rather convenient for his trustees. The Council that administered his wealth was able to exercise supreme power in his name.

But now, in the year 2100, the Sleeper is awake. And that will have dramatic consequences. It will trigger a revolution.

Wells saw the novel as a nightmare vision of the triumph of both capitalism and the city. Wells’ own slightly eccentric socialist views would seem to form the political program of the Sleeper. The Sleeper, who becomes the Master, is not entirely impressed with this future world. And he becomes less and less impressed the more he sees of it. He is also less than happy with those who exercise power in his name, and finally takes the fateful decision to assume direct control, and to complete the revolution.

It’s a decidedly odd book. Graham talks about his democratic ideals but it appears that salvation can only come the actions of one strong individual. Wells seems to have little real faith in the masses. Graham becomes a kind of democratic socialist dictator (something the world would see rather a lot of in the hundred years following the publication of this book).

At the time the book was written no-one had yet been able to build an aircraft that could actually fly but Wells describes aerial battles with considerable vigour and enthusiasm.

It’s a book that’s interesting mostly for the rather confused mishmash of political ideas that it embodies. An oddity, and really of historical interest only. Not to be compared with Wells’ great science fiction novels like The Island of Dr Moreau.