Audiobook · read by volunteers
Sleeper Awakes
H. G. Wells (1866–1946)
Read by James Christopher, Tim Perkins, Tammy Sanders, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Sean McGaughey, Kathy Jacobs, Ryan Sutter, J. M. Smallheer, Mark Nelson, Zachary Brewster-Geisz · 26 chapters · 8 h 14
About the book
Graham, a man tormented by insomnia, falls into a trance and sleeps for two centuries. When he wakes, he finds himself in a London he cannot recognise, with enormous buildings, moving roadways, flying machines and a society that seems to have been rebuilt around him. Worse, because of savings that have grown with compound interest, he has become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, and everyone wants him: those who rule in his name and those who dream of overthrowing them. H. G. Wells uses this startling idea to question wealth, class and technology. A team of volunteer readers shares the twenty-six chapters of his fast-moving, thought-provoking dystopian novel. It is a vivid mixture of adventure, satire and early science fiction, with a hero who is lost in time.
Introduction
Herbert George Wells, who lived from 1866 to 1946, was an English writer, and with Jules Verne he is often called one of the founders of science fiction. He began with a run of scientific romances in the 1890s, among them The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, and he later wrote novels of social comedy and many works on history and politics. The Sleeper Awakes appeared in 1910, in a revised version of a serial from 1899.
The novel belongs to his early, darker vision of the future. Wells imagines a London two centuries ahead, ruled by a handful of powerful trustees, with a population of poor labourers, a pleasure-seeking elite and a sense of mounting unrest. Through the confused eyes of the sleeper, we see a world that has taken some of the tendencies of Wells's own time and carried them to extremes. The book is both an adventure and a warning.
This LibriVox recording lasts a little over eight hours and is divided into 26 chapters, including a preface to the new edition. It is read by a team of volunteers. For readers of science fiction, it is a fine chance to hear an influential early vision of a technological future, and its questions about inequality still feel timely.
Wells wrote the book in the years when he was busy imagining the possibilities of the coming century, and some of his guesses, about huge cities, mass entertainment and aerial travel, now seem striking. Whatever the details, the central idea, of a man who wakes up as the owner of the world, is still a thought-provoking one.
Public domain
H. G. Wells died in 1946: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text