H. G. Wells's 1899 novel When the Sleeper Wakes introduced the
idea of the city as one really, really big building. In this,
our hero Graham, a confirmed Marxist, falls asleep in Victorian
Cornwall, wakes up in London 203 years later and discovers that, owing
to a trust fund set up by his brother, he is now the ultimate
capitalist and owner of half the planet.
The London that Graham finds himself in is a world of technological
wonders with radios, televisions, automatic tailors. Thirty
million people live in a wind-powered metropolis that has grown so
much that it now a single structure with familiar landmarks such as
St. Paul's and the Houses of Parliament neatly tucked away in the
basement while the Thames has become an underground canal for shipping
goods into the city.
This confusing warren of concrete chasms and steel latticework is
connected by cable cars, slidewalks, and
escalators wide enough to take an entire rockettes' chorus line with
room to spare. Meanwhile, far above the earth soar gigantic
flying machines that are as ungainly as they are impressive, but which
have still managed to put the railways and ocean liners out of
business much as they have in our world.
This would be a neat little technological playground (in an ant hilly
sort of way), but we discover that all is not well. Not
only is the world is ruled in Graham's name by an evil (what else)
corporation, but that a third of the population live in virtual
enslavement to an organisation descended from... the
Salvation Army!
You may wonder why
When the Sleeper Wakes was never adapted for screen like Wells's
other novels. In fact, it was in 1973 by Woody Allen as
Sleeper, where the role of Graham is filled
by one Miles Monroe, a Greenwich Village health food shop owner who
goes into hospital for an ulcer operation and wakes up 200 years in
the future to discover a world ruled by a tyrannical nose and plagued
by Rod McKuen poetry.
This epic may have lacked the gigantic London and
vast flying machines of the original and the megalomaniacs of Wells's
imagination may have been replaced by a disembodied
proboscis,
but Mr. Allen's version did have the orgasmatron, so I'd say that Woody
wins on points.
You may wonder why
When the Sleeper Wakes was never adapted for screen like Wells's
other novels. In fact, it was in 1973 by Woody Allen as
This epic may have lacked the gigantic London and
vast flying machines