The Sleeper Awakes

In 1899, H.G.Wells' novel, When the Sleeper Wakes, was published - first as a serial, then as a book. In 1910 Wells did something very few writers do - he revised the earlier novel and republished it as The Sleeper Awakes .

"Like most of my earlier work", Wells wrote in the 1910 edition's preface, "it was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story."

According to an article on wikipedia, in the 1910 edition Wells also brought the ‘flying machines’ up to date. I shudder to think how these 'flying machines' were described in the earlier edition. The airplanes he describes in the 1910 edition may have been "advanced" for the  pre-World War I time period, but they are woefully out of date in the time period in which the story takes place. If one uses 1899 as the starting date, the Sleeper awakens in 2102 - using 1910 as the date the Sleeper went into his "trance", the story takes place in 2113. Either way, we see that Wells could not predict the advancements made in aircraft technology.

Graham, an Englishman living in London in 1897, takes drugs to cure insomnia and falls into a coma. In the early stages of his coma, Graham inherits a considerable sum of money (from two sources) which is held in a trust created by a relative. When he awakens, he learns that he actually owns the Earth. He also learns that mismanagement of the trust has led to a dystopian society.

Setting aside the technological issues, Wells did a marvelous job predicting the behavior and attitudes of the people of the 21st century. Wells could see the changes taking place in Victorian society and being obviously a good judge of character, his view of how people would turn out in 200 years was amazingly accurate.

If one can overlook the miscues Wells made in predicting 21st century technology, then the story is quite interesting and worth a read.