When God Laughs and Other Stories

Jack London

Collection Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Project Gutenberg _bleiler _isfdb

Publisher: The Macmillan Company

Published: Jan 2, 1911

Page Count: 146

Description:

1355. WHEN GOD LAUGHS AND OTHER STORIES. +Macmillan;
New York, 1911. Mills and Boon; London,
1912.
Short stories, including [a] A Curious Fragment.
(Town Topics, 10 December 1908) Class war. The
incidents described take place in the twenty-sixth
century, but were described at a much later period.
* The Kingsbury, Alabama, area is owned by the Vandewater
oligarchy, who greatly oppress their industrial
workers. The first of the Vandewaters, generations
ago, was a working man who ingratiated himself
with his bosses by acting as a labor spy, goon,
and strike breaker. In one incident he was responsible
for the deaths of over a million slave workers.
He was suitably rewarded. Because of his low
birth, he could not be admitted to the upper class,
but his children were thus elevated. * In the twenty-
sixth century, exploitation and cruelty continue,
particularly among the overseers, who embezzle the
workers' sick fund. One of the workers, on appealing
to the Vandewaters, receives as justice and reward
a flogging. * On a second occasion, when a
worker's arm is torn off by defective machinery and
the overseers refuse to pay sick benefits, the workers
send the severed arm to the reigning Vandewater
in a dish of early strawberries, along with a note
of appeal. He heeds the appeal, but the system is
not improved and continues until a later, successful
revolution. * An expression of emotion rather than
a short story. The point would seem to be that individual
benevolence or tokenism cannot improve a
rotten system. * Despite the advanced futurity,
there is no indication of technological or social
change.