Karen Russell of the very original Swamplandia-fame, has written a dystopian novella for Atavistic Books: Sleep Donation.
The story is of a futuristic America from which sleep has been chased away by "our 24-hour news cycle, our polluted skies, crops and waterways, the bald eyeballs of our glowing devices."
An epidemic of insomnia is not far off the horizon of possibility, particularly in the United States, where pharmaceutical corps are reaping bonanzas off classifying insomnia as a "disorder", and downplaying the fact that sleeplessness is a byproduct of a culture of hyperproductivity and deep economic insecurity.
What's innovative in Russells novella however is the concept of donating sleep. We've run a vast gamut of donations, of organs, of blood, of food, of clothes and other commodities, of money, of time even (in speculative fiction). But sleep?
The single most sought after donors of sleep in Russell's universe are babies, who become "deep, rich wells" of this most precious of things that we take for granted. Adult sleep comes with liabilities like nightmares and other kinds of dilutions, but babies "serenely churn forth a pure, bracing sleep, with zero adult terror corrupting it."
Atavistic Books has created an unique interactive video trailer of the book.
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