Hot Sleep

Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle (1979) is a science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card, belonging to his Worthing series. It was Card's first published novel-length science fiction work, with A Planet Called Treason following it. The short story collection Capitol came out earlier in the same year. Card's later novel The Worthing Chronicle (1983) covers some of the same material.

Plot summary

The story follows Jason Worthing, nicknamed Jazz, a boy on the imperial capital planet Capitol. He possesses "the swipe," a genetic trait granting telepathy. Because the swipe is feared throughout the Empire, those who have it are executed. After being discovered, Jazz attempts to flee but is captured by Abner Doon.

Doon helps him become a prominent space pilot. Eventually, Doon sends Jason to lead a colony, intending to spread the swipe more widely. When Jason's ship reaches its destination, he is attacked; the memories of all but one of the 333 colonists are destroyed, and two-thirds of the colonists are killed or left unable to be revived. Jason prevails, ensuring the colony's survival.

Over many generations, he guides the colony's cultural development using a substance called Somec, which allows humans to sleep for long periods without aging. When Abner Doon later visits to see Jason's progress, Jason takes his own ship to the bottom of the ocean after Doon leaves. The title refers to the experience of using Somec, the life-extension drug that underpins the interstellar Empire. Somec induces a suspended animation accompanied by an unbearable, torturous burning sensation throughout the body.

Title

However, the process erases the user's memory. Before entering Somec sleep, memories are recorded and stored separately, to be returned upon awakening. Because the memory of the process itself is lost, each user experiences the panic of the burning hot sleep "for the first time," regardless of how many times they have previously taken Somec. Hot Sleep was later re-released as a serialized novel in the first issue of Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show in October 2005.