Hot Sleep
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Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle is a novel by Orson Scott Card, published in 1979. It is currently out of print. Card's 1983 novel The Worthing Chronicle, which superseded it, covers some of the same ground. The title arises from the operation of somec, the life extension drug forming the foundation of the interstellar Empire. Somec creates an unbearable, torturous burning sensation throughout the body while pushing the patient to suspended animation. However, the somec process exterminates the user's memory, and so these memories are recorded and stored separately shortly before they go under, to be returned to the body after they have awakened, and so the memory of the process itself cannot be retained. Thus, each somec patient experiences the panic of burning hot sleep "for the first time" (as far as their memory goes) no matter how many times they have taken somec before.
[edit] Plot
The book follows Jason Worthing, also known as Jas, who is a boy growing up on Capitol, the capital planet of the Empire. Jas has "the swipe", which is a genetic trait that allows for telepathy. The swipe is feared in the Empire, so those who posses it are executed. After being found out as a swipe, Jas tries to escape, which leads to his capture by Abner Doon, who helps him rise to prominence as a space pilot. Eventually, Abner sends Jason away as the head of a colony so that the swipe would become more widespread, but when his ship reaches the planet, he is attacked, and the memories of all but one of the three-hundred eleven colonists are destroyed and two-third of the colonist are killed or damaged beyond awakening. Jason prevails, however, leading to the survival of the colony, which he visits every several years, being on Somec the rest of the time. Eventually, Abner Doon comes and sees how Jason has done, and after Doon leaves, Jason takes his ship to the bottom of the ocean.
[edit] Trivia
Some of Card's fans have expressed their preference for Hot Sleep over The Worthing Chronicle, calling it a more satisfying, immediate book, though clearly the work of a writer still learning his craft.
The book takes place in the same universe as the short stories collected in Capitol, also published in 1979. The Worthing Chronicle and some of the stories from Capitol are combined in The Worthing Saga, published 1992.
Hot Sleep was re-released as a serialized novel in the first issue of Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in October 2005.
