The Man Who Awoke

1933 Manning, Laurence [Edward] (1899-1972). The Man Who Awoke: A Classic Novel from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975. Originally published in somewhat different versions illus. Frank R. Paul in Wonder Stories (Mt. Morris, IL) 4.10 - 5.2 (March - August 1933) as “The Man Who Awoke.” 4.10 (March): 756-67; rpt. in Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction. Ed. Leigh Ronald Grossman (Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2011), 179-85 with an editor’s note on 179; and in Nature’s Warning: Classic Stories of Eco-Science Fiction. Ed. Mike Ashley (London: British Library, 2021), 71-111; “Master of the Brain.” 4.11 (April): 838-49; “The City of Sleep.” 4.12 (May): 926-36; “The Individualists.” 5.1 (June): 58-69; and “The Elixir.” 5.2 (August): 150-59, 183. Except for the first chapter, which is “The Forest People” in the book, the chapters in the book have the same titles as the original stories. Rpt. as three parts in Captain Future (New York) 3.1 - 3 (Summer 1941 – Winter 1942): 111-19; 115-21, 126-27; 111-17, 128-29. Rpt. as five parts under the same titles and with the same illustrations as in Wonder Stories in Famous Science Fiction (New York) 1.3 - 2.1 (Nos. 3 - 7) (Summer 1967-Summer 1968): 80-109; 6-33, 81; 36-65; 42-70; 58-83.

A series of future dystopias set thousands of years in the future with of the concerns human dependence on machines. The first chapter is a flawed utopia in that it is a successful eutopia with population growth creating a violent generational division based of a rule regarding the rights of future generations. In the concluding chapter immortality has been achieved with generally positive results. The author was born in Canada and moved to the US in 1920.