The 11 Most Iconic Sci-Fi Stories About Sleep Of All Time
The limits of the human mind don’t have to remain in the waking state.
In some sci-fi narratives, the final frontier of human experience is space. In other stories, it’s time. But, in all cases, the real final frontier just might be what happens in our brains when we’re asleep. From prose to TV to film, the genre of science fiction has always tackled speculative tales about sleep with bold ideas and strange results. Is sleep something to master? Can we use sleep to save our lives? To destroy our way of life? What is the purpose of sleep in the future? Can we use it to travel in time?
Here are 11 of the most iconic and interesting science fiction stories — from across various media — which reveal the strange dimensions of dreams and sleep.
11. Doctor Who: “Sleep No More”
The Doctor and Clara tackle a bizarre future take on sleep.
Written by Doctor Who stalwart and Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss, “Sleep No More” has been, for the past decade, the black sheep of Who’s beloved ninth season. Presented as found footage, the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) discover a far-future status quo in which technology called Morpheus has been created to give human beings sleep in smaller doses. The idea is that sleep has now been shortened by employers, giving workers a simulation of a full night’s sleep in just five minutes.
This idea, that sleep is colonized by a capitalistic system, is one of modern Who’s more arresting ideas. While the monsters in this episode may not be everyone’s favorite, the social implications of the episode are far-reaching and profound.
You can watch Doctor Who, “Sleep No More” (2015) by renting the episode on Prime Video, Apple TV, and elsewhere.
10. “The Function of Dream Sleep” by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison in the 1960s.
Can your dreams harm you in real life? This 1988 story from sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison deals with a man who, while processing his grief, fights off a massive mouth with huge teeth in his dreams. For those familiar with the work of Ellison, this story is, in many ways, a quintessential Ellison piece, full of dark imagery and a blur between fantasy and science fiction. But also with all good Ellison stories, the central question is one we often face in real life: If we’re asleep for half of our lives, what is happening in that part of our existence?
“The Function of Dream Sleep” is in the Harlan Ellison collection Angry Candy.
9. Vanilla Sky
What is real? Is this car real? Is Tom Cruise real?
Technically, a remake of the 1997 film Open Your Eyes, you might say that Vanilla Sky is the ultimate collision between mainstream cinema and arthouse science fiction. After getting disfigured in a horrible car crash, David Aames (Tom Cruise) enters into an existence that, in some ways, feels unreal. Eventually, the true narrative of the film reveals that he’s part of a cryonics program, and that, indeed, a huge portion of his life is a dream. Whether or not David chooses to live in the dream or live in his real life becomes the central crux of the film, and one could argue that this dream was his real life all along.
Vanilla Sky streams on MGM+.
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.
One aspect of Brave New World that is often forgotten is that the basic conditioning of every human being in this future society occurs while they are sleeping. This is called hypnopaedia, a real idea with a pseudo-scientific basis. In the novel, suggestive ideas are played for sleepers, which, in the book, make them more compliant with the norms of society.
Does this work in real life? Does playing your baby Mozart at night make them more into classical music when they’re older? The jury is out on the true science of hypnopaedia, but in Brave New World, and its various imitators since, it remains a powerful and pervasive sci-fi idea about sleep.
Brave New World is available at bookstores everywhere. The underrated 2020 TV series version is streaming on Peacock.
7. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone in Total Recall (1990), Paul Verhoeven’s famous adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.”
No survey of science fiction sleep stories would be complete without a mention of the work of Philip K. Dick. In fact, he was fixated on sleep, so his work appears twice on this list, which, in a sense, doesn’t even fully represent the author’s intense interest in the subject. To really dive deep into sci-fi sleep, you could read and discuss only PKD stories for the rest of your life. (A Scanner Darkly would be another honorable mention.)
But the 1966 story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” is easily one of the most enduring and excellent PKD stories on sleep because it’s essentially a meditation on where memory ends, and dreams begin. The story (and both film adaptations) center on the concept of placing false memories while a person is in a dream state with the intent of making those memories feel like real experiences. The story begins with Douglas Quail dreaming of going to Mars, desperately wanting to take the trip to the red planet. The service, Rekal, promises to give him those memories, make him believe it really happened. But the twist is, Quail’s dreams were never fiction, meaning the fictional dreams implanted by Rekal create reality-altering problems, not just for Quail, but for everyone around him, too. While the 1990 movie is phenomenal, and the 2012 version less so, neither contains the incredible twists of Dick’s original story, in which the layered dreams of Douglas Quail are more interesting, and perhaps, more real than anything the reader can imagine.
“We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” is found in most Philip K. Dick “best of” collections. Total Recall (1990) streams on MGM+. The 2012 version streams on Tubi.
6. Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Night Terrors”
Gotta get your sleep in space!
The Star Trek franchise is no stranger to wondering about what happens while we’re sleeping, and the Season 4 episode of The Next Generation, “Night Terrors,” is perhaps the greatest take on the dangers of not getting enough sleep, ever. While investigating a derelict starship, the Enterprise is trapped in a strange anomaly, and the crew all start getting really bad sleep, which results in a series of horrifying hallucinations. Nobody is dreaming, nobody is having REM sleep, which, as Dr. Crusher points out, is making them all go nuts.
The thing is, sleep deprivation in any long voyage, either in outer space or elsewhere, is a very real problem. And, although “Night Terrors” reveals a misunderstood alien lifeform is behind all of this, the science fiction of going nuts because you’re not getting deep, dreamy sleep is barely fiction.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Night Terrors” streams on Paramount+.
5. Star Trek: Voyager: “Waking Moments”
These aliens literally live in sleep.
In an entirely different Star Trek sci-fi sleep take, this Voyager episode from Season 4 is all about aliens that can only exist in dreams. Unlike the misunderstood aliens of “Night Terrors,” these creatures are both more terrifying and more sympathetic, since the rest of the universe has the ability to fully exist in a waking state.
In classic Star Trek form, “Waking Moments” forces the viewer to think about what life would be like if you lived for your sleep, rather than the other way around. The idea that an episode of Star Trek could mostly focus on people lying down is one of the pieces of evidence that we’ll never quite get over, wondering about the elusive nature of our unseen lives.
Star Trek: Voyager, “Waking Moments” streams on Paramount+.
4. Flatliners
Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon in Flatliners.
OK, in theory, this movie is more about near-death experiences than actual sleep, but the notion of very vivid nightmares makes Flatliners an epic and unforgettable story about the mysteries of our unconscious mind. When a group of friends tries to intentionally bring themselves to the brink of death, what they discover in their dreaming minds isn’t at all what you might expect. The strength of Flatliners isn’t that it gestures at some kind of great beyond close to death, but instead, that the ghosts of our own making are more terrifying than anything supernatural.
Flatliners is available to rent on YouTube, Prime Video, and elsewhere.
3. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”
Princess Luna creates a dream state.
Is My Little Pony a science fiction series? Well, when you consider that many of the best episodes involve dimensional doorways, and that John de Lancie regularly appears in this series as “Discord,” a being of pure chaos who is basically identical to Q from Star Trek, then yes, MLP: Friendship Is Magic is very much a sci-fi show (you may ignore the existence of “magic” in the title).
In Season 4 of MLP, “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep” is the uber-sci-fi dream story in which a being made from Princess Luna’s guilt and insecurities threatens to consume all of Equestria. Previously, Princess Luna was an evil creature called “Nightmare Moon,” a kind of Darth Vader figure who was turned back to the light by the Mane 6, the consistent and quirky heroes of the show. By Season 4, Princess Luna is the kind master of the dreamworld, but in this episode, a creature of her own making called the Tantabus threatens to consume everyone’s dreams, and then, the waking world.
While much of this excellent episode has certain things in common with Forbidden Planet, no other sci-fi or fantasy story takes the conceit of a war within the dream world quite to this level. It’s like The Matrix, meets Philip K. Dick, meets, well, ponies.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season 4 streams on Tubi.
2. Blade Runner
What do you know about Harrison Ford’s dreams?
Although Blade Runner is based on the Philip K. Dick novel (told you he’d be back!) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the movie, in some ways, is far superior. And although a huge part of the story (like Total Recall) details false memories, implanted in the minds of Replicants, dreaming is the key plot twist in this film. In fact, the idea that Deckard (Harrison Ford) dreams of a unicorn is perhaps the most integral and talked-about thing in the entire film. How could anyone know our dreams? If we were made by someone else, then would our makers also create our dreams?
What is revealed in the fleeting moments of sleep in Blade Runner changes the entire context of the film, proving that watching somebody sleep in a movie can be the most exciting thing, ever.
Blade Runner is available to rent on YouTube, Prime Video, Apple TV, and elsewhere.
1. Black Mirror, “San Junipero”
Can we just keep living while we sleep?
One of the most heartbreaking episodes of Black Mirror is, without question, “San Junipero.” While the huge sci-fi anthology series is known for its dark, depressing prognostications, “San Junipero” stands as a wonderful example of when Black Mirror is simply good, humanistic science fiction. Like Vanilla Sky, “San Junipero” eventually reveals itself to be a story about people who exist in a perpetual state of lucid dreaming, aided by technology, which uploads their minds to a kind of cloud.
The central romance between Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is what gives “San Junipero” its tender soul, but the idea that we could all keep dreaming, perhaps, even after our lives are over, is a powerful one. In life, human beings dream of heaven, but what Black Mirror dared to say is, what if we can dream of heaven, and what if it existed?
