Asleep in the Afternoon
by E. C. Large
ISBN 9780907259374

Back in print after an absence of nearly 70 years, the facsimile editions of E. C. Large's novels Sugar in the Air and Asleep in the Afternoon are what we now call "mash-ups," made up of scientific research, social satire, and fictional flights of fancy. Sugar in the Air (1937) is a "scientific romance" in which the idea of extracting sugar from the air is held, for the duration of the book, in suspended disbelief by characters desperate for work in a period of economic recession. A description of the product development and manufacturing process doubles as a critique of capitalism's stewardship of technological progress that suggests alternative production models for today's designers. Sugar in the Air concludes with the novel's central character--unmistakably modeled on the author--receiving his pension and beginning work on a novel called Asleep in the Afternoon, which was the title of the novel E. C. Large wrote in 1939. This metafictional satire tells parallel stories about one woman's belief in sleep as a cure for society's ills and her advocacy for a mysterious new device that can induce it. The alternating tale concerns this fictional author's writing process and family life.

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