The Sleeper Awakes

By H.G. Wells and Patrick Parrinder

A troubled insomniac in 1890s England falls suddenly into a sleep-like trance, from which he does not awake for over two hundred years. During his centuries of slumber, however, investments are made that make him the richest and most powerful man on Earth. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved. Oppressed and uneducated, the masses cling desperately to one dream - that the sleeper will awake, and lead them all to freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin
• Release date: Mar 31, 2005
• ISBN: 9780141921266

H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) wrote the science fiction classics The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, and has often been heralded as a father of modern science fiction.

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Reviews for The Sleeper Awakes

[nx74defiant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the later version. It starts with a preface where Wells explains why he was unhappy with the original version and why he made the changes. That was interesting to read.
It is the story of a man who falls asleep for 200 years. When he awakes he finds out that he owns the world due to the management of his estate. He struggles to adapt to this new world and how to create a better world.

[robertday_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a surprisingly early dystopian romance by Wells; a Victorian suffering from insomnia finally is able to fall asleep, and stays asleep for two hundred years. When he finally awakes, he finds that through a series of clever moves by his long-dead cousin, he had become in the meantime a useful repository for all sorts of investments that others wished to tie up for commercial reasons. So now, on paper at least, he owns the entire world.

Of course, this wealth has been managed by a bard of trustees, who have done very nicely out of it, thank you very much. Graham - the Sleeper - finds that his awakening precipitates a workers' rebellion; but the leader, Ostrog, is no more likely to want to bestow power on the Sleeper than the previous trustees were to want to give it up. Graham finds his utopian socialist ideals colliding head-on with a ruthless leader.

In some senses, this is quite a remarkable book. The London of 2098 is a gleaming vision in glass, steel and chrome, at least on first sight; and its marvels of the future would not look out of place in a book or film of our own time. (Indeed, the Alexander Korda film of Wells' later book 'Things to Come' depicts a similar city.) Travel is via moving roadways (a device later picked up by other science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). And, marvel of marvels, Mankind has Conquered the Air! The chapters dealing with the Aeroplanes very vividly describe the sensations of flight, which given that the original story was written in 1899 and so predates powered flight by some four years, is quite an achievement,

The Sleeper moves through the city, at different times as a fugitive, a celebrity, a figurehead and finally as a leader. He sees the necessity of the overthrow of the old order. Wells gives us an analysis of the economics of the future world which seems highly prophetic to us, outlining the rise of a middle class in control of all the finance, that wishes to secure power at the expense of the labouring classes, fuelled by a flight to the cities and the migration of work.

This would be a fascinating book, but for one thing. Wells' politics is mainly remembered now for its socialism, but in later life he also embraced eugenics. This book shows that he also, in his earlier life, equally embraced racism fairly readily. There ae two uses of the 'n' word; at first, I thought this might be a fairly casual lapse, typical for its period. Then, Wells puts racist attitudes in the mouth of Ostrog, which made me think that perhaps this was done to mark that character's transition to villain. But no. As debate continues, the Sleeper too puts racist views forward; policing in this world is privatised, and the companies that have parcelled up and monopolised Africa's industrial output have black police who are described in racial stereotypes, and the threat of whose deployment is used as a spur to action.

The Left's internationalism had a gradual development; in this book, Wells shows that he was not always at the forefront of new thinking. Although in other areas this book is remarkable for what it presages, in this one area it fails badly, and there are plenty of people who will want to avoid it on those grounds. After that, the book's failure to embrace feminism seems minor by comparison: there is only one named female character, and although she is identified as a leading figure in the workers' revolt, her role in the book is negligible. The Sleeper even turns away from any sort of romantic engagement with this woman because of his Duty to the Revolution.

So: a dry tale with some remarkable foresights and a glaring failure which will make it unacceptable to many. Sometimes our heroes have feet of clay.

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a decent romp through a good idea about a man who "sleeps" for a period of two hundred years and then awakens. This is largely an exploratory novel, with a detailed setting that is made the focus rather than specifically on the characters involved. Overall, I thought it was intriguing and that it was decently written.

3 stars.

[baswood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can see plenty of reasons why people and critics have not liked Wells' story of a London 200 years in the future as much as some of his earlier science fiction because it can be read as:
An anti-capitalist rant
Overtly racist in its portrayal of a negro police force
A novel that literally finishes in mid-air
Wells' vision of the future falls fairly wide of the mark
Structural problems with passages of world building that seem levered into an adventure story
Very little character development.

Wells himself was not happy with the original novel published in 1899 as When the sleeper Awakes, because in 1910 he published a revised version calling it more simply [The Sleeper Awakes]. His reasons for the revisions were that the original novel was written in too much haste and at the same time as [Love and Mr Lewisham] with the latter novel taking precedence. Looking back he found some of the writing clumsy and he also wanted to remove any hint of a love affair between Graham (the sleeper) and Helen Wotton. There was no drastic re-write and he did little more than tidy up his novel and so must have been reasonably happy with it.

Having read the revised version I would brush aside most of these criticisms because I think Wells has written an astonishing science fiction novel; packed with ideas that have been mined by many writers following him, when they created their dystopian worlds: [1984] and [Brave New World] foremost among them. The story perhaps has a too simple premise; A man(Graham) wracked by insomnia eventually falls asleep, not waking up until 200 years in the future. While he has been sleeping his investments have accrued and been managed by friends to such an extent that he is in effect owner of half the world, by the time he wakes up in 2002. He awakes to a very different world, one where rampant capitalism has resulted in a society divided by class. A few ultra rich people control the cities, forcing the working population to labour under awful conditions in order to qualify for food rations. A Political schemer Ostrog has been using the legend of (the Sleeper) as a way of garnering support from the working population in order to seize power from an elite Council, however when the sleeper awakes against all expectations and proves to have his own ideas about how the city should be run then conflict with Ostrog is inevitable.

It is Wells description of a city of the future that is so fascinating, with it's moving walkways, the giant wind machines responsible for providing power, it's omnipresent advertising with sound bites designed to hook people into buying the products, Its denuding of the countryside forcing people to live in the glass cities, the complete destruction of the family unit with dormitories for raising children, the use of psychology and hypnotism that largely replaces medicine, the babble machines that constantly give the people the latest news in sound bites and finally the condition of the lower working classes forced to wear a uniform and literally being fed according to how hard they can work. It is the city of London that Wells is describing and it is nothing like the London of 2002, but Wells' vision of the future could merely be out in timing rather than fact. It is Wells' skill in creating this future world in which he sets his story that is so impressive and the story has its moments of excitement; Graham's escape over the glass rooftops of London with the ever present wind vane machines looming in the background. The fight between Graham and Ostrog in the vast hall of the Council and finally Grahams derring do in the monoplane above London. Yes there are times when the story is suspended while Wells describes his new world, but that is the case with many science fiction novels and Wells is more skilled than most.

Finally perhaps it is Wells' lack of humour in this novel that makes less than a completely satisfying read. Graham shows plenty of courage, political nous and a desire to put things right as he sees it. He says to Ostrog;

"I came from a democratic age and I find an aristocratic tyranny" "Well" says Ostrog "but you are the Chief Tyrant"

I feel that Ostrog's witty reply would have been lost on Graham, perhaps Wells should have given him, and expanded that love interest with Helen Wotton after all, just to show him in a more human light, but obviously this was not Wells' intention.

Remembering that this book was written in 1899 and that Victorian views on race and sex were different to some of our own then I think this is a disturbing and thought provoking view of a future that still might be ahead of us. Even if that is not the case Wells' world building is impressive and with a story line that has moments of high drama and imagination I would not hesitate to recommend this to readers interested in early science fiction. It may not have quite the literary merit of 1984 or Brave New World, but can be read as an interesting precursor and H G Wells knew how to write a good novel with wide appeal. I would rate this as 3.5 stars

[randystafford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[angelab86 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting offering from among H G's lesser known works. The central idea is quite a chilling one, esp. when the Sleeper wakes and realises for how long he has slept. The novel also offers a fairly effective critique of monopoly capitalism, though the way in which it arises here is rather unlikely. A word of warning: there are some rather pejorative comments about black people here, even from the lips of the Sleeper himself: it si important to remember it is a novel of its time.

[usnmm2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think this is one of Wells best.The sleeper is a man that spends 500 years in a comma. When he wakes he finds that he owns the world. The best part of this book is Wells predictions of a future society.