In order to assess the genetic correlates of differences in ethanol-induced anesthesia, a set of 27 recombinant inbred (RI) strains was derived from an initial cross of the "long-sleep" (LS) and "short-sleep" (SS) selected lines of mice. In generations F24 and F25, samples of 534 and 580 mice from the LSXSS RI strains were tested for fall time, sleep time, and blood ethanol at awakening subsequent to intraperitoneal injection of a 4.1-g/kg body weight dose of ethanol. Approximately 2 weeks later, mice from F24 were also tested for body temperature lowering and blood-ethanol elimination rate (beta 60). Differences among the average ethanol-induced sleep-time scores of the RI strains are large (ranging from 36 to 171 min) and account for over 50% of the observed variance. Effects due to generation, sex, litters within strains, and the interaction between strain and generation are also significant, but account for relatively small proportions of the total variance. Quantitative genetic analyses of these data suggest that differences in sleep-time scores are polygenic; however, allelic differences at the albino (c) locus may have a pleiotropic effect. Genetic correlations between sleep time and blood ethanol at awakening (-0.79) and between body temperature 60 min after injection and beta 60 (+0.48) are significant. Because differences among the LSXSS RI strains are large and highly reliable, they should be valuable animal models for testing more searching hypotheses about the etiology of individual differences in ethanol-induced anesthesia.