On the very same day I received a review copy of local (Healsvile) author Bob Rich’s 2021 sci-fi novel Sleeper, Awake, I also got my reserved library copy of the 2025 literary sci-fi novel The Dream Hotel by Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami.
The Dream Hotel was shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 2026. It was longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, which is where I first knew of the book. (Also longlisted for that year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction was the 2024 sci-fi novel The Ministry of Time by English author Kaliane Bradley, which I am still waiting to read.)
As for Sleeper, Awake, my first thought about it was the famous song lyrics: “Beautiful dreamer, wake onto me. Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.” Then I thought of the Bible: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Then I thought of Bach’s music “Sleepers, Awake!”… There are so many ideas that can be used in speculative fiction, especially horror. 🙂
But Bob’s sci-fi story is about a woman who put herself into suspended animation and woke up 1433 years later, to an utterly different world whose population is strictly limited to one million… I look forward to discovering what that world is like.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 