Once upon a time, in a city full of computers, computer-people, and increasingly people-like computer programs, there was a writer who lost his sleep over a manuscript.

He had been running so fast to meet the deadline that sleeping felt like a waste of time, a chore to be finished as shortly as possible. He started staying up till 1 in the morning at first, pushed it up to 3 a few weeks later, and started going to bed at 5 finally. Only, he realised, going to bed is not always the same thing as going to sleep. For some time he made do with the few minutes of shut-eye he got each morning, but it made him feel as sluggish as a zombie and turned watery-vapid the words he needed to finish up his work.

Fortunately, the writer had someone clever around him. Fortunately, also he took her advice when she suggested replacing their bedtime reading with audiobook versions of their favourite books.

Each night for the next couple of months, the two of them shared a pair of airpods and listened to Stephen Fry’s narration of the Harry Potter books. The writer soon got back into Sandman’s good graces; the blessed...