When the Sleeper Awakes

In the dystopian vision of H. G. Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes (1910), a man awakes to a London where all he knew has radically changed after his sleep of two hundred and three years. Due to the wonders of compound interest, he is now this later world's richest man. As a committed socialist and futurist, he now sees his dreams realized and revealed to him in all their abhorrent and frightful glory. 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. The Sleeper Awakes (1910) is a dystopian novel by H.G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world. A fanatical socialist and author of prophetic writings, the main character awakes to see his dreams realized, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities. The novel, originally published as When the Sleeper Wakes in 1899, was re-written in 1910, its original form having proved unsatisfying for Wells .. A fanatical socialist falls asleep for two hundred and three years and wakes up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world