We spend one-third of our lives asleep. This biological fact is something that, with time and technology, is less and less taken for granted. In many science fiction stories, the future of sleep is cozy and idyllic — an elevated state living within a dream world. In others, sleep is more of an evolutionary shackle that gets in the way of productivity. The latter focuses on questions that haunt anyone who feels there are not enough hours in the day. What if we didn’t have to sleep? What if sleep were optimized in a way that overrode human biology?
In the 2002 James Bond movie, Die Another Day, one dark answer appears from the villain of the film, billionaire mogul Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens). Graves sleeps in a pod for just minutes out of the day in order to mitigate the side effects of a bizarre gene resequencing procedure. But, because Graves is an evil Bond villain, he tries to make his not-sleeping into a productivity-centered superpower. “One of the virtues of never sleeping, Mr. Bond. I have to live my dreams,” he says glibly. “Besides, plenty of time to sleep when you're dead.”
