"My uncle," said the man with the glass eye, "was what you might call a hemi-semi-demi millionaire. He was worth about a hundred and twenty thousand. Quite. And he left me all his money." I glanced at the shiny sleeve of his coat, and my eye travelled up to the frayed collar. "Every penny," said the man with the glass eye, and I caught the active pupil looking at me with a touch of offence.
Two miles of American front had gone dead. And on two lone infantrymen, lost in the menace of the fog-gas and the tanks, depended the outcome of the war of 1932.
In The Lord of Death, four scientists, aided by reverse-magnetism, travel to a dead planet where they discover that one human's lust for power destroyed all life there-except for him. In suspended animation, he awaits the newcomers. In The Queen of Life, (considered a feminist tale) the scientists (one has revealed herself as a woman) travel to a planet encased in a glass sphere to protect the overpopulated planet from the sun's radiation. Conflict leads to a riot.
Social living requires the elimination, or at very best, the modification of many elements necessary to survival in "nature". And when an emergency arises, very often it is the person who would be considered a "criminal", in other situations, who alone is able to cope with the necessities. If we manage to eliminate "violence" from human affairs, what will we find when a need for "violence" arises--a need outside of man's artificial control of his environment?
Before reading this story, prepare yourself for a jolt and a chill in capsule form. O. Henry could have been proud of it. It could well become a minor classic.