It is interesting to note that his novel The Iron Heel (written in 1906 and published in 1908) belies London’s avid interest in science fiction. Considered to be one of his best novels, the novel predicts a Fascist oligarchy in the United States under threat from a proletarian revolution, allegedly pictured in manuscripts discovered by scholars in the socialist twenty-seventh century. “A Thousand Deaths” (1899), London’s first science fiction tale, utilizes some key motifs of the science fiction genre: a solitary, embittered scientist subjects his son to some revivification experiments, but the scientist is soon dematerialized by a fantastical weapon invented by his son. London’s story “The Shadow and the Flash” (1903) has as its concern the quest for invisibility on the part of two scientists. “The Enemy of All the World” (1908) features a “mad scientist” who invents a formidable weapon and terrorizes the world with it. Much of London’s science fiction indicates his belief in the superiority of the white race. In 1904, London visited Japan and other Far Eastern countries, and his correspondences from there disguise his deep racist attitudes toward the Oriental people. For example, at a Socialist rally in Oakland, after his return from the Far East, he publicly declared his hatred of the Oriental races, and in his science fiction story “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910), the West destroys the Chinese with a bacteriological bomb. In London’s posthumous novella The Red One (1918), London pictured a stone-age society which has formed a death cult and worships a strange sphere from outer space.
Plagued with debts throughout his life, London accepted an offer from Macmillan in 1902 for $2,000.00 for The Call of the Wild, which is all of the money that London ever received from what is perhaps his most famous book. In 1904, London decided to compose a “complete antithesis [and] companion piece” to The Call of the Wild. Instead of the devolution or the decivilization of a dog, he said, “I’m going to give the evolution, the civilization of a dog. . . .” The result was White Fang, which appeared two years later, in 1906. In 1913, London published John Barleycorn, a book about his alcoholism, and a book that should be considered as a sincere tract describing the plight of the alcoholic.
While writing for only sixteen years, London produced an amazing body of work: nineteen novels, eighteen volumes of essays and short stories, and numerous other books, both sociological and autobiographical, and London’s popularity has hardly ebbed over the years. The Call of the Wild has been translated into more than thirty languages, and it exists in millions of copies; sales and printing of White Fang are only slightly less in number than The Call of the Wild. Other popular London novels are Martin Eden (1909), The Valley of the Moon (1913), and the book which many critics feel comes closest to being the Great American Novel, The Sea Wolf (1904).
