Reception
Reviewing the Shasta edition, L. Sprague de Camp concluded that the novel was "a rattling good adventure story," its technical flaws outweighed by "the express-train speed of the action the bounce, zest, and exuberant humor."
In its entry on L. Ron Hubbard, The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography identified Slaves of Sleep as among the "classics" within the genre of science fiction. In a 1986 article in The Washington Post, journalist Janrae Frank commented on L. Ron Hubbard's writings, "Much of his best work of the '40s and '50s, Fear, Slaves of Sleep, Typewriter in the Sky, is written in exactly the same style and won reader polls at the time." Writing in authors Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson placed Slaves of Sleep among Hubbard's "finest novels". The book Icons of Horror and the Supernatural noted, "L. Ron Hubbard had great success with a heroic fantasy novel set in the world of the Arabian Nights, Slaves of Sleep, when it appeared in John W. Campbell's 'sophisticated' fantasy magazine Unknown". In a 1993 article, The Columbus Dispatch recommended an edition of the book bound together with its sequel The Masters of Sleep, as a suggested holiday gift.
In 1994, Roland J. Green of the Chicago Sun-Times noted, "L. Ron Hubbard's Slaves of Sleep/Masters of Sleep (Bridge, $18.95) reprints two short novels on the borderline between fantasy and horror. A further reminder of the late Hubbard's talent." San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2003 that writer John Baxter retained a first edition copy of Slaves of Sleep in his private collection of rare books. In 2008, a first edition copy of the book was estimated to be worth between US$400 to $600.
Read more about this topic: Slaves Of Sleep
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
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