Children of the Apocalypse

“‘BUT why tell you more? You have heard enough to understand that art, the last refuge of men of leisure, was destroyed by the very Machines that gave man the leisure to enjoy art. . . . So it was with everything. Adventure of all kinds died. The last depths in the earth were plumbed,…

HALF an hour later I shot a ptarmigan amid the snow and so tasted meat for the first time in three days. This was the greatest luck, for the descent was worse than the climb on the other side had been. For a day I floundered amid the drifts, and came at last to a…

LEISURELY, from his loose sleeve, the Manchu drew a paper—the paper which a few months earlier, Foh Wong had signed on the editor’s request—and which Yang Shen-Li now read aloud: “Herewith, for the sum of five thousand dollars, I employ Kang Kee to kill my wife—” Foh Wong grew pale. He stared at the Manchu,…