The Sleeper Awakes - Softcover

Wells, H. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141441062 ISBN 13: 9780141441061

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"Students of early science fiction will welcome the University of Nebraska Press's series Bison Frontiers of Imagination."―Times Literary Supplement (Times Literary Supplement)

From the Back Cover:

The Sleeper Awakes is H. G. Well'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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0141441062
• ISBN 13: 9780141441061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252
• Editor: Sawyer Andy