When the Sleeper Wakes

When the Sleeper Wakes was written by H.G. Wells in 1899.  It's about a man named Graham who wakes up after a 200 year sleep to find that he alone is the top 1% of the world economy.  There are some visionary concepts in here; he predicted: television, flying machines, advertising, banking, pleasure cities with incredible architecture and moving walkways, but it's mainly a book about class status and social stratification of the future and the struggle against the totalitarian empire.  Wells was a prophet; over 100 years ago he wrote this:

Very speedily power was in the hands of great men of business who financed the machines.  A time came when the real power and interest of the Empire rested visibly between the two party councils, ruling by newspapers and electoral organizations--two small groups of rich and able men, working at first in opposition, then presently together....
The urgent necessity of either capturing or depriving the party councils of power is a common suggestion underlying all the thoughtful work of the early twentieth century, both in America and England...
The counter revolution never came.  It could never organize and keep pure.  There was not enough of the old sentimentality, the old faith in righteousness, left among men.  Any organization that became big enough to influence the polls became complex enough to be undermined, broken up, or bought outright by capable rich men.  Socialistic and Popular, Reactionary and Purity Parties were all at last mere Stock Exchange counters, selling their principles to pay for electioneering.  And the great concern of the rich was naturally to keep property intact, the board clear for the game of trade.  Just as the feudal concern had been to keep the board clear for hunting and war.  The whole world was exploited, a battlefield of business; and financial convulsions, the scourge of currency manipulation, tariff wars, made more human misery during the twentieth century--because the wretchedness was dreary life instead of speedy death--than had war, pestilence and famine, in the darkest hour of earlier history.


'Nuff said!