Monday, September 17, 2007

A Book in Review – Fantastic Tales

Fantastic Tales, By: Jack London edited by Dale Walker
Fiction: Sci-fi, fantasy 221 pages copyright 1975

Yes this is some random book from the 70’s, but as it is a collection of short stories from a famous author I thought I would say a little about it. First, it has a number of lesser know tales, some of which hadn’t been in print since they were first published. For some I think that there was a reason for this. This book was a mixed bag, some of the stories were very good and held my attention, some I read and wondered why I wasted my time on them. A number were interesting just because they were written around the start of this last century about what would happen in it and it was fun to see what he got right and wrong. For example, he foresaw China growing vastly in number of people but that with such a huge number of people they would be forced to take over all the lands around them as China would not be big enough to hold nearly a billion people. And that Japan would be the one to bring China into the modern world because they were “a kindred race” who understood each other as brothers. Also in this story they were able to take over all these places that in his time were often European colonies as he foresaw the reduction of European peoples to the point where much like in real live they are at negative population growth.(except Ireland last I heard.)

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