First published by the San Francisco Evening Post Magazine, July 28, 1900, reading from The Science Fiction Stories of Jack London, 1992, Carol Publishing, pages 35-39
I don’t think that Unto Death belongs in a science-fiction collection. Strictly speaking it is horror. But, it does mark an intense misogynistic point in London’s evolution as a writer. It is the truncated story of the unloved engagement between Yukon prospector Bat Morganston and cold materialistic bitch Frona Payne.
Unto Death is crude as horror goes, shallow as sci-fi goes, but cuttingly insightful as straight fiction. It’s not a great story, could have been more obliquely executed, and the characters might have been better etched. But, it was only a short. Most modern novelists would take 240 pages to tell this same tale with no more revelation about the human condition than what the young London achieved over 100 years ago.
The subtext, best summed up by the then current term 'trump of doom,' remains that of the vengeful ghost story, but shows London evolving toward the tragic, biologically informed worldview that would characterize his final works in all of their bleak intensity.
