The Strength of the Strong

London's socialist fables: a tribe that invents property, a strike-breaker's world, the Unparalleled Invasion in which the West solves China by germ warfare — written in 1910 and unbearable to read now for the right reasons. He had been an oyster pirate, a hobo, a seal hunter and a prospector before twenty-four, and he wrote these as arguments, not entertainments.