The Sleeper Awakes

by H. G. Wells, Patrick Parrinder (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141921266
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	03/31/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	340 KB

About the Author

H.G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'.

Patrick Parrinder has written on H.G. Wells, science fiction, James Joyce and the history of the English novel. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Andy Sawyer is a Librarian at the University of Sheffield with a particular interest in science fiction.

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1866

Date of Death:

August 13, 1946

Place of Birth:

Bromley, Kent, England

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Normal School of Science, London, England

Table of Contents

	Preface	i
1	Insomnia	1
2	The Trance	11
3	The Awakening	19
4	The Sound of a Tumult	25
5	The Moving Ways	41
6	The Hall of the Atlas	47
7	In the Silent Rooms	59
8	The Roof Spaces	73
9	The People March	89
10	The Battle of the Darkness	97
11	The Old Man Who Knew Everything	111
12	Ostrog	125
13	The End of the Old Order	143
14	From the Crow's Nest	149
15	Prominent People	157
16	The Monoplane	171
17	Three Days	183
18	Graham Remembers	191
19	Ostrog's Point of View	203
20	In the City Ways	213
21	The Under Side	237
22	The Struggle in the Council House	245
23	Graham Speaks His Word	261
24	While the Aeroplanes Were Coming	267
25	The Coming of the Aeroplanes	275

Editorial Reviews

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

Times Literary Supplement