![]() ![]() (Indeed, the Alexander Korda film of Wells' later book 'Things to Come' depicts a similar city.) Travel is via moving roadways (a device later picked up by other science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). The London of 2098 is a gleaming vision in glass, steel and chrome, at least on first sight and its marvels of the future would not look out of place in a book or film of our own time. In some senses, this is quite a remarkable book. Graham finds his utopian socialist ideals colliding head-on with a ruthless leader. Graham - the Sleeper - finds that his awakening precipitates a workers' rebellion but the leader, Ostrog, is no more likely to want to bestow power on the Sleeper than the previous trustees were to want to give it up. Of course, this wealth has been managed by a band of trustees, who have done very nicely out of it, thank you very much. ![]() So now, on paper at least, he owns the entire world. When he finally awakes, he finds that through a series of clever moves by his long-dead cousin, he had become in the meantime a useful repository for all sorts of investments that others wished to tie up for commercial reasons. This is a surprisingly early dystopian romance by Wells a Victorian suffering from insomnia finally is able to fall asleep, and stays asleep for two hundred years. ![]()
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