The Man Who Awoke

by Laurence Manning | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: Global Overview for this book
Registered by TomHl of Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on 5/10/2011
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by TomHl from Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on Tuesday, May 10, 2011
A birthday gift from my 25yo son.

mass market paperback
Ballantine #24367
First Printing, February 1975
Cover Price $1.50

Journal Entry 2 by TomHl at Pewaukee, Wisconsin USA on Monday, October 31, 2011
The five stories in this fix-up novel were first published in successive issues of Wonder Stories during 1933. Laurence Manning was a Canadian-born science fiction writer (1899-1972), who authored several series of stories for pulp magazines, and mostly gave up his writing career in 1935 to run a mail-order nursery business. In 1975, Ballantine published them together in paperback form for the first time.

The stories concern a man named Norman Winters, who puts himself into a state of suspended animation and wakes up successively in 5000AD, 10000AD, 15000AD, 20000AD, and 25000AD. Each awakening constituted one of the original stories, and portrays successive and varying visions of the future of humanity. At first, it was difficult to believe this was written almost 80 years ago, as Norman wakes up in a world whose oil and fossil fuel resources were depleted by a selfishly consumptive period of history called the 20th century. But then, in later stories, Manning's less prognostic forecasts of the power of the atom, and of biology are amusingly naive. And certain concepts (giant tripods, human evolution in the future) seem to have been inspired by H.G.Wells writings, which were written only 40 years earlier. In the end, I found it interesting, mostly from a historical point of view.

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