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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a true classic, December 17, 2005
finished this just the other night and what a finish. i'm not going to spoil it because if you havn't read it you should - if you like your sci-fi with a liberal portion of politics and social commentary (which i guess i do). from the very beginning, the beauty of the writing is that it shares the sense of dislocation and naivete of the protagonist most eloquently. a man waking in a future world where what he sees around him is totally unfamiliar, yet what lies underneath is an expression of barbarism that a post-enlightment intellectual would surely find abhorrent. the technology wells envisions is perhaps the most telling sign of his intensly perceptive style. the only inline editorial note is towards the end, where an insert advises that wells is writing of aeroplanes 11 years before the first took to the sky and of aerial fighting 18 years before the first dogfight (although once you've made it to flying, it's not that very large a mental gap at all to flying and fighting together...). alongwith telephones, televisions and the classic moving pathway or travelator (found also in asimov, the fantastic planet and others), the other main visual vocabulary is in the architecture. It's all about the scale and in this you could maybe argue (if you were stoned and theoretically ambitious...) that future comrades-in-architecture took some inspiration. which is to say that it reminds me of beijing and berlin, the only two cities i've visted that either were or are communist. but it's the social commentary i enjoy the most. a rather dark piece of commentary it is too, marking it alongside brave new world, 1984 et. al. the most unsettling part about reading this was to ponder in 2005 the questions wells was asking in 1899. are the extrapolations he was making, perhaps influenced by contempory thinking such as conspicous consumption and antecedents such as rosseau, bearing themselves out today? The stark seperations Veblen was identifying in the seperation of classes by the work they perform (essentially split into industrial and non-industrial) are a central theme in The Sleeper (first published in 1899, the same year as Veblen's <cite>The Leisure Class</cite>).
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Prescient, July 17, 2007
This review is from: When the Sleeper Wakes (Hardcover)
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) is remembered as one of the very pioneers of the genre of science-fiction. He is also remembered for his Leftist politics, including a stint with the Fabian Society and his embracing of "Free Love." This book was written in 1899, and is one of the last science-fiction books he wrote before his turn towards social realism in his writing. In this dystopian novel, Graham falls into a coma-like sleep, a sleep that he wakes from some 203 years in the future. But times have changed. Due to the wise investments of a board of trustees, Graham's money has compounded into the greatest fortune the world has ever seen, and the trustees have used it to virtually enslave the entire planet. The common people know that those who use "The Master's" money are misusing it, and they pine for a time when the sleeper will wake and set things right. But now that Graham is awake, he finds himself a pawn in a world he little understands. Overall, I found this to be an interesting book. H.G. Wells made a lot of predictions in the book that have sense come to pass, including airplanes, the rise of trans-national corporations that are not under the control of their nation of origin, the rise of a decadent class of useless, pretty, party-people (Hollywood), and so much more. The one fly in the ointment, however, was Wells' use of race. The leaders use an army of "Negroes" to control the population, "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads..." But, that said, I did find this to be a fascinating, forward looking book. Mr. Wells is rightly remembered for his near prescience in matters of science, and this book shows how much he knew about the future of economics as well. I highly recommend this book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought Provoking Vintage Science Fiction, November 27, 2011
H. G. Wells is one of the pioneers of science fiction and probably one of the most influential authors of that genre. An argument can be made that almost any contemporary science fiction theme (alien invasion, time travel, biological manipulation, technology gone awry, dystopian future societies) can in one way or another be traced back to an H. G. Wells novel. A big part of H. G. Wells' appeal, as is the case with all good science fiction, comes from the fact that the stories he wrote were not primarily (or even predominantly) designed to titillate with speculation of novel technologies, or space aliens, or any other sensationalist image. His stories explore many of out most fundamental desires and fears, and they all had a significant dose of social criticism. This is one of the main reasons why his stories are still read today and have for the most part aged remarkably well. Nowhere is the fact of timelessness of Wells' fiction better illustrated than in "The Sleeper Awakes." This is a short novel about a nineteen century Englishman who falls in a deep sleep only to awake over two hundred years later. The World has changed beyond recognition, and "The Sleeper" finds himself in a remarkable predicament - he has become the owner of the entire planet. This state of affairs was made possible because no one really expected him to wake up, so for the most part his ownership of all the World's resources was thought only to be nominal. However, his awakening profoundly shakes this state of affairs, and he suddenly finds himself at the very center of revolutionary social upheavals and a struggle for the ultimate power. This struggle is the main focus of the larger part of the novel. "The Sleeper Awakes" at a first sight seems to have some resemblance to Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, but it is a much darker tale. (It is certainly a far cry from Woody Allen's ridiculous comedy adaptation " Sleeper"). Wells expects the future society on the one hand to be a very advanced and a highly desirable place to live, but it also has a much darker and more sinister side to it. This utopia/dystopia dichotomy is the source of tension in the novel, and it also provides very effective rationale for the plot advancement. The theme of sleeper has a lot of strong resonances with both Arthurian legends and the basic tenants of Christianity. It is to Wells' credit that he manages to tap into those subjects in a subtle way that its does not force itself on the reader. In fact, Wells' writing is overall of the very high quality. He was mindful to write good literature, and not just entertaining stories for mass consumption. There are a few futuristic ideas in this novel that seem silly and naïve in retrospect, but they in no way detract from the main story. The reader should also be mindful of the fact that some of the attitudes that Wells exhibits in this novel might be considered bigoted today, but in this respect he was just a product of his own age. With these caveats in mind, "The Sleeper Awakes" is a very interesting and thought-provoking novel that should appeal to anyone who is interested in serious vintage science fiction.
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