通向未来的媒介——赫·乔·威尔斯《当沉睡者醒来》中的泛媒介化趋势与社会主义愿景

multiple properties of the material, which is often accompanied by another word, “materiality”, have been considered critical aspects framing the features of media. Materiality is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary currently as “that which constitutes the ‘matter’ of something: opposed to formality; the quality of being material; material aspect or character; mere outwardness or externality.” As the most essential and basic structure of the phenomenal world against the superstructure to which spirit and art belong, materiality carries a comprehensive meaning which can be better understood associated with media. The importance of the notion, which expresses the nature of being material, has been widely recognized in the flourishing media discourse in the 1960s. A notable example is perceived in McLuhan’s proposition of media as “extensions of man”, which entails any material in unfixed and variable forms, or even formless media, such as electricity. The concept of materiality plays a pivotal role in locating the inherent features of media, including human media, which is articulated by its connection to the content and the form of a particular medium. Here in When the Sleeper Wakes, the material aspect of Graham is apparent in his intermediality as a connective medium of the past and future, and in his objectivity during the mysterious trance.

2.2 Man’s Media Functionality

The functionality of media deals with the key roles that a particular medium of communication or specific kinds of media play from the perspective of society. In When the Sleeper Wakes, there are two essential media functions incarnated in Graham: the surveillance function and the correlation function. The former entails monitoring events in society, keeping citizens informed of crises, and offering warnings and instructions. The latter refers to how the Sleeper’s presentations and interpretations of news affect people’s perceptions, emotions, and attitudes towards social events and political issues. 

Graham’s surveillance function is perceptible as he meticulously inspects the future of London. Like the Time Traveller in The Time Machine, Graham explores the new society and perceives a system of corruption and exploitation, which he discovers is highly distasteful. Still, with his luckily privileged power, Graham has the chance to motivate and conduct a revolution against it. Unfortunately, trapped in his old memory of the 19th century, Graham finds it is hard to determine a standpoint in distinguishing the new world, which is marked by his repeated ascents to high areas from which the modern kingdom can be regarded thoroughly, followed by dolorous descents toward subjugated communities. Resorting backward to Victorian values is not enough for the current world since Graham is tortured by the contradictions in Victorian society and the social orders of the future world. As Wells describes it:

“It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment” (93).

Chapter Three Messages of Media: Wells’s Vision of the Future .................. 34

3.1 From Individualism to Collectivism ............................... 34

3.2 Wells’s Socialist Vision of the Future ..................... 37

Conclusion ............................ 44

Chapter Three Messages of Media: Wells’s Vision of the Future

3.1 From Individualism to Collectivism

Wells understands the critical value of cooperation. He believes that humans have become cooperative beings because larger groups are “biologically more efficient and so unavoidable” (The Conquest of Time 59). Wells uses examples of ant colonies, corals, and symbiotic lichen in Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction to testify that cooperation is as significant as individual competitions