Resumo de When The Sleeper Wakes - H. G. [Herbert George] Wells

finished this just the other night and what a finish. i'm not going to spoil itbecause if you havn't read it you should - if you like your sci-fi with aliberal portion of politics and social commentary (which i guess i do). from the very beginning, the beauty of the writing is that it shares the senseof dislocation and naivete of the protagonist most eloquently. a man waking ina future world where what he sees around him is totally unfamiliar, yet whatlies underneath is an expression of barbarism that a post-enlightmentintellectual would surely find abhorrent. the technology wells envisions is perhaps the most telling sign of his intenslyperceptive style. the only inline editorial note is towards the end, where aninsert advises that wells is writing of aeroplanes 11 years before the firsttook to the sky and of aerial fighting 18 years before the first dogfight(although once you've made it to flying, it's not that very large a mental gapat all to flying and fighting together...). alongwith telephones, televisionsand the classic moving pathway or travelator (found also in asimov, thefantastic planet and others), the other main visual vocabulary is in thearchitecture. It's all about the scale and in this you could maybe argue (ifyou were stoned and theoretically ambitious...) that futurecomrades-in-architecture took some inspiration. which is to say that it remindsme of beijing and berlin, the only two cities i've visted that either were orare communist. from the very beginning, the beauty of the writing is that itshares the sense of dislocation and naivete of the protagonist most eloquently.but it's the social commentary i enjoy the most. Clearlythe man wanted to talk. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. "Itis the garment of my misery. The whole world...is the garment of mymisery." Spin, spin into the darkness The tumult of thought, theconfusion, the eddy and eddy. He wasremoved from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, aftersome weeks, to London. It was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a youngman. The hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of the fashionablelength, was iron grey and clipped close, and the face that had been pink andwhite was buff and ruddy. The twomen stood close to the glass, peering in. I've been in America most of thetime." The world changes. It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. It wentup beyond the top of his eyes. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakestowards the hour of dawn. Hesupposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley--but he couldnot recall that white edge. The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it lefthim giddy and weak--and amazed.

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