The Sleeper Awakes

A Novel by one of the grandfathers of Science Fiction, H.G.Wells. In his book 'the sleeper awakes' follows the often shocked but at the same time exhilirated travels of a man who wakes up in London 200 years in the future – only to find that he's become some sort of Messiah...

The plot is interesting within its self, but apparently the descriptions of the future london, and the architecture are worth a look.

"vast and vague architectural forms."

"balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering." Looking at the city, he says, is "like peering into a gigantic glass hive."

"great structural lines of the interior," following "a narrow but very long passage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of tubes and big cables." From there, he passes over "strange, frail-looking bridges" through an "endless series of chambers and passages."

"spanned by bridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree."

"a space of huge windmills, one so vast that only the lower edge of its vanes came rushing into sight and rushed up again and was lost in the night and snow."

"All about them huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves more and more steeply up into a luminous haze. Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution, passed upward and downward into the black. And with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snowclad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield."