Jack London The Road

Did you know that in 189something thousands of hobos marched on Washington to demand free stuff. I didn't.
In fact I do not know anything about that era. In spite of that this is a good read.

I admit when I think of Jack London I think of "Call of the Wild".

My kindle told me he wrote some SF. I had no idea.


"The Road is Jack London's collection of stories from his life as a hobo. In this entertaining collection of tales and autobiographical essays, London relates every aspect of the hobo's life -- from catching a train to cadging a meal. The wealth of experiences and the necessity of having to lie for a living brought depth London's subsequent stories. In "The Road," Jack London relates the tricks that hobos used to evade train crews, and reminisces about his travels with Kelly's Army. Jack London later credited his story-telling skill to the hobo's necessity of concocting tales to coax meals from sympathetic strangers. (less)"
www.goodreads.com/book/show/54455.The_Road


"Jack London was a lifelong fantast. The first money he ever received as a professional writer was for the science fiction story "A Thousand Deaths" published by The Black Cat in 1899. Thirteen of his 188 published short stories and four of his twenty-two novels fall readily into the category, and other stories contain fantastic elements.

London explored numerous styles of science fiction: pre-history, apocalyptic catastrophe, future war, scientific dystopias, technocratic utopias. Running through most stories are the ideas of social evolution, racialism, and anti-capitalism. In some stories, London emphasizes "social science fiction," the problems of society, particularly the exploitation of workers and the materialism of capitalism. By positing extreme cases of social order or disorder, he hopes to convey how human suffering based in economic inequality may be eliminated. In other cases, his imaginary societies were meant to demonstrate the validity of Social Darwinism with its emphasis upon the rise of the superior Anglo-Saxon race.

London's science fiction shows the influence of such horror fantasy writers as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe, and the popular science fiction writers of the late 19th century, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Stanley Waterloo. Themes already familiar to turn-of-the-century readers reoccur in London's stories: invisibility, humans turned into beasts, worldwide pestilence, cataclysmic war, indefinable terrors, ghosts, time travel, extra sensory perception (this, before the term was even in the vocabulary)."...
london.sonoma.edu/Students/scifi.html

I downloaded this.

The Jack London Science Fiction Megapack: The Complete Science Fiction and Fantasy of Jack London
by Jack London

Thanks for the information, sounds like an interesting read!

otisptoadwater wrote: Thanks for the information, sounds like an interesting read!

Very. I got it from Amazon for cheap but it is in the public domain. I just paid because I have adopted to my device but not to reading a book on my computer.

Thanks for the tip. I got it for free and bought a bundle of Jack London's novels for only $1.
Read White Fang and Call of the Wild as a kid and it will be interesting to check out his other work as an adult.