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    The Scarlet Plague
    The Scarlet Plague
    The Scarlet Plague
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    The Scarlet Plague

    By Jack London and Tony Robinson

    3.5/5

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    An old man walks along deserted railway tracks, long since unused and overgrown; beside him a young, feral boy helps him along. It has been 60 years since the great Red Death wiped out mankind, and the handful of survivors from all walks of life have established their own civilization andtheir own hierarchy in a savage world. Art, science, and all learning has been lost, and the young descendants of the healthy know nothing of the world that was—nothing but myths and make-believe. The old man is the only one who can convey the wonders of that bygone age, and the horrors of the plague that brought about its end. What future lies in store for the remnants of mankind can only be surmised—their ignorance, barbarity, and ruthlessness the only hopes they have. This cataclysmic tale remains a terrifying prophecy of the perils of globalization, which are all too pertinent today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780942032
    Author

    Jack London

    Jack London (1876-1916) was an American writer who produced two hundred short stories, more than four hundred nonfiction pieces, twenty novels, and three full-length plays in less than two decades. His best-known works include The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and White Fang.

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    Reviews for The Scarlet Plague

    3.5/5

    128 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This short story is dark but wonderful. Written in 1912, it has its place in early dystopian stories, and one with plausible science behind it. Jack London imagines a future in which an incredibly deadly plague hits mankind in 2013, and has the events told in retrospect sixty years later by one of the few survivors in the San Francisco Bay Area to his grandkids. Aside from how early it was written, what makes the story special is how realistic it seems. One example of this during the plague is people’s behavior, e.g. the lawlessness, violence, and occasional acts of sacrifice; another is in how much the modern world would depend on infrastructure and the rapid communication of news, which when lost would quickly isolate people. London’s predictions of world population growth before his plague hits are pretty accurate; he imagines 8 billion by 2010, and the reality ended up around 7 billion by then. He also eerily describes an outbreak of a disease that sounds like polio - in his book it arises in 1947 and is eradicated by 1958; in reality the first large epidemic was in 1916, and Salk’s vaccine was having a dramatic effect by 1955-7. Most interesting to me, though, was that before the plague, London has the control of both the United States and the world in the hands of oligarchies of the ultra-wealthy, which in some countries is openly true today, and in others, dangerously close to being true. It’s fascinating that he has such pessimism of how democracy would play out, with Morgan the Fifth appointed President by the Board of Magnates, a group of a dozen men who rule the country. Society is heavily stratified, with the powerful owning the land, machines, and everything else, and those who produce food, the ‘food-getters’, their slaves. This comes back to haunt mankind during the onset of the plague: “In the midst of our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us.”Society is so completely devastated, with only about one in a million people surviving, and so knowledge is quickly lost. It’s chilling to me that the grandchildren listening to the tales of the past are not only uneducated, but they scorn concepts like germs you can’t see, and man’s history. While life continues on and London foresees man eventually rebuilding his world, he also sees an inevitable cycle, which seems to me one of the darkest possible apocalyptic thoughts. Just this quotes, along those same lines, from the introduction by Matthew Battles:“London’s vision of these cycles evokes the philosophy of history of eighteenth-century thinker Giambattista Vico, whose time saw the ascendancy of science, the beginnings of ostensibly benevolent, bureaucratic monarchies, and the end of religious warfare in Europe. But to Vico, these hallmarks of progress were already harbingers of a fall; the glories of civilization were also the seeds of an overweening pride that would bring us to the brink of tragic choices. Vico saw history as a system powered by our paradoxical drives: to poetry and reflection on the one hand, and ‘ferocity, avarice, and ambition’ on the other. These opposed regimes act through society to produce history that cycles from primitive savagery to barbarian society to the majesty of civilization – and back, again and again.”
    • 4/5
      Every once in a while I dip into something outside of my normal genre and in the public domain. This short book caught my eye due to the other books by the author.

      It is some time in the future. A primitive grandfather and his two wild grandchildren are forraging for food or more accurately eating crabs as this is the only food available to them. A grizzly bear wanders around. The picture is of remote wasteland, hopelessness and destitution. The grandchildren aren't really interested in the tales of their elderly relation, they are more akin to savages, but as he insists on telling them, they half-heartedly listen to the story....

      Grandpa returns to the past when the Scarlet Plague swept the planet destroying billions of people and bringing modern civilisation to its knees. He recounts the gruesome deterioration of the many as the few with some kind of immunity struggled to survive. The decisions that had to be made as each person realised they had succumbed and perhaps only had minutes left to live.

      Although this account is short and simple, the author does a good job in drawing the reader in. I found it difficult to put down and read it through in an hour.

      The whole premise of the story reminds us that as a race we are completely out of control. We have no power to determine events and we don't know at all what will happen in the future. We could easily be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust or killed off more slowly as antibiotics become reistant or even (as this book suggests) be afflicted with a deadly plague that kills within minutes. What a scary thought: we think of ourselves as being so enlightened, progressive and powerful but the reality is that we are totally powerless and at the mercy of the elements....

      It was interesting for me that even writing from a non-religious standpoint, the author highlights that in times like this when people are dropping like flies, it is each man for himself:

      I did not go to the groceryman's assistance. The time for such acts had already passed. Civilization was crumbling, and it was each for himself.

      We can try to deny it, but we are all inherently selfish due to indwelling sin in our hearts.

      There are some people scratching their heads at this point in my review. Of course, all of the above would be true, if God was not orchestrating events. It is a great relief to me, as a Christian, that He is in total control and that none of the things suggested even in sci-fi can happen without His approval and direction. We are really fragile, small, weak and helpless in all manner of things, but God is not and He knows exactly what will happen and when. How the atheist copes with the uncertainties of life (and death) I have no idea. I'm just very thankful that I'm not in that camp.

      Worth reading if you are secure in the knowledge that it won't happen unless God wills it. There is no bad language, some violence which isn't especially graphic and no sexual content.
    • 3/5
      This short novel (or novella), originally published 100 years ago, is set in San Francisco 60 years after the Scarlet Death came in 2013. It opens with a very old man and his grandson, a young boy, walking along an old monorail track, now an animal trail, near the sand dunes and Cliff House on the beach. I suspect I may have read this when I was a young teen, because there was a vague familiarity to the story and illustrations.The old man tells his grandchildren the story of how the Scarlet Death came and how rapidly civilization collapsed. The story was interesting, although quite dated in some ways. There was an extra appeal to me as the story covers many places and towns in the Bay Area where I was born and live. As London depicts the days before and during the plague it sounds like 1912 rather than 2012, although in other ways his observations of the world and it's problems are rather timeless. This is not a book to get excited about, but holds a place as one of the earliest pieces of post-apocalyptic fiction.
    • 3/5
      Not really special, except from a historical perspective. Written in 1912, set in 2073, looking back to 2013. The last remaining survivor of a virulent worldwide plague tells his savage grandsons the story of the plague and the loss of his civilization. It's always interesting to see how authors of the past imagined the future.
    • 5/5
      Did Cormac McCarthy read this and go on to write The Road? Set in 2073, an old man, "Granser" and his grandson, twelve years old Edwin are making their way through San Francisco sixty years after the Scarlet Plague had wiped out most of the world's population. They meet two other boys and Granser tells the story of how the world came to such devastation as they are surrounded by. He tells how he is glad there are no books any more, in time the whole cycle of history will be repeated and civilization will discover all it previously knew. Through the forest they reach the sea...
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised by this short work. Unlike most, I have never been impressed by London's works, finding them to lack any sophistication- in my view, even his seminal effort Sea Wolf reads more like young adult fiction. Nonetheless, Scarlet Plague is a departure in its stark, dismal portrayal of post-apocalyptic human nature. An easy reading, fast moving work.
    • 3/5
      can't decide if it wants to be socialist or deeply reactionary. would like to have had London do a working-men's version. standard account of reversion to base,which, in this case, means 'prehistoric' inferior to Purple Cloud in its account of the final horror of civilization's end

      hilarious to me that narrator a Berkeley English prof, from family of same, and somehow paid handsomely in 2012 under industrial oligarchy. oh, science fiction!!
    • 3/5
      So short as to barely even qualify as a novella, The Scarlet Plague still manages to be slow-moving. There's almost no action, as 90% of the book is the aged protagonist rambling on to his four grandsons (all of whom are filthy, illiterate post-apocalyptic savages) about how the world was before and immediately after the titular plague. London commits one of the cardinal sins of speculative fiction - making his characters speak in weird pseudo-futuristic jargon, which always always always just ends up sounding dated and silly, yet he avoids one of the other cardinal sins in that he does not try to make too many specific predictions about future technology. Because of that restraint, the book doesn't feel as quaint or archaic as say, H.G. Wells or Jules Verne or even early Asimov.

      If this book came out today, I'd probably give it two stars, but in 1912 the idea of ragged survivors struggling in the aftermath of a global plague must have been shocking, mind-blowing stuff. As I read this, I tried to pretend I had never read The Stand, or Refuge, or seen Children of Men or I Am Legend. (Actually, I always kind of like to pretend I didn't see that last one.) And in light of that, remembering that there was no I'm-the-last-man-on-Earth genre until Jack London came along and created it with this book, I had to give it three stars.

      Plus, I grabbed it for free (public domain) and read it in like 45 minutes. Did I mention it's short?
    • 4/5
      A gripping and quite horrifying little story about a post-apocalyptic world in 2073 where almost the entire population has been wiped out by the eponymous plague. The narrator is an old man, the only survivor of the world before, recounting to a group of cynical and disbelieving boys the disaster that happened 60 years earlier. The only slight jarring issue, as with all such "future historicals" and obviously unavoidable, is that the world of the plague year is like 1913, roughly when it was written, rather than 2013 when it is supposed to be set. The characters in that world are rather cliched beautiful women and heroic or beastly cruel men.This e-edition came up with a mini-biography of the author's interesting life (worth reading) and material for students in the form of a plot summary and character analyses - to be avoided if the story is new for you.
    • 3/5
      An "after-the-end" story on the order of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Some of London's prejudices show through, though I thought some might be character-driven. I'll be reading London's "The Iron Heel" next to explore some of his other fears and visions for the future.
    • 4/5
      In an post-apocalyptic San Francisco, an old man describes to his grandsons how a plague destroyed civilization.This short story feels like an ur-story for George Stewart's Earth Abides (also set in San Francisco). It doesn't really have a plot; rather, it's just a description of civilization's quick fall from disease and a meditation on how easily humanity could return to savagery. Frequent readers of apocalyptic fiction will recognize a lot of ideas that were later fleshed out by other writers, but London should get credit for being one of the first. This might also be considered an early steampunk story, as well. London's vision of the future--the plague hits in 2013--includes dirigibles and steam power, as well as some radically altered version of U.S. government. However, it's also terribly classist and sexist. But it's short enough to read in one sitting and would be of interest to anyone studying this genre of fiction.
    • 4/5
      A remarkably prescient tale for our times told briskly by one of the great masters of the short story.
    • 3/5
      Civilization was passing in a sheet of flame and a breath of death.In this 1910 novella, an old man tells his three grandsons the story of the scarlet plague, which ravaged the whole world 60 years before, leaving very few survivors. The boys are not really interested as they live a tribal existence in a depopulated California, spending their time herding goats and catching crabs down at the shore, and don’t understand that long-dead world of English professors and motor cars.An enjoyable novella, which I listened to on the sffaudio podcast.
    • 3/5
      It’s 2070-something. “Granser” is telling his three grandsons about the “Scarlet Plague” that happened in 2012 or 2013. It was a disease that killed (ridiculously fast once it hit – within minutes or hours – no time to get help) a very large proportion of the 8 billion people on Earth at the time. Granser was one of the few who lived through it. Civilization is trying to rebuild itself, but the focus of the story is on the plague and aftermath as Granser saw it.It’s a short story, so doesn’t take long to read. I was impressed with the guesstimate of 8 billion people on Earth in 2012 – not too far off. I never did figure out why the man cried so easily, though, at taunting from the boys. Overall, it’s an ok story.

    Book preview

    The Scarlet Plague - Jack London

    The Scarlet Plague

    Jack London

    Contents

    Title Page

    Foreword

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    Biographical note

    Also by Jack London

    SELECTED TITLES FROM HESPERUS PRESS

    Copyright

    Foreword

    When I was in my late twenties I lived in a commune in Bristol, and we used to bulk-buy our food from a market stall in the centre of the city. The stallholder’s name was Jack. He was short and wiry with cropped ginger hair, wore blue jeans and a checked lumberjack shirt, and his eyes blazed with a withering certainty like those of an Old Testament prophet.

    Whenever we met we argued non-stop, me sitting on the little bench in front of his stall rolling countless cigarettes, him shovelling his dried fruit and pulses out of big wooden vats into austere brown paper bags. Our views were diametrically opposed. I was an international revolutionary and wore the badges to prove it; he believed that social transformation would only come about through the example of wise, disciplined individuals like himself. I was a long-haired carnivore with a motorbike. He was a vegetarian, loathed the internal combustion engine and never wore socks. He was more of a pessimist than me. I thought world harmony would be achieved very soon, probably in the next decade or so, as soon as capitalism had been smashed and the creative force of ordinary people had been unleashed; he believed mankind was hell-bent on destroying the planet, and that within a hundred years our entire species would be wiped out, with the possible exception of a few hundred shivering refugees, forced to eke out a living trudging through the snowy wastes of Antarctica. Mine was the more fashionable intellectual position, and most people considered Jack a nutter.

    Yet thirty-five years later, it’s his bleak prognosis that seems more likely to have been accurate. Many of us who cut our political teeth in the 1960s still cling to the illusive notion of progress and a fair, well-ordered society, but we cannot deny that any such utopian future is likely to be scuppered by the terrifying transformation our planet is currently undergoing.

    The evidence is all around us. A decade and a half after I first met Jack, I achieved sufficient minor celebrity status to be able to afford to jet off to warmer climes at least once a year. I learned to scuba-dive in the Seychelles, swam off the coast of Mauritius and Indonesia, and discovered the breathtaking underwater environment of the Indian Ocean. The coral was multicoloured, exotically shaped, and omnipresent. Today when I go back to those same submarine haunts, it lies in deathly grey piles on the ocean floor like mounds of slag shovelled from some vast underwater furnace. According to an ecological survey conducted in 2005, more than nine-tenths of the Seychelles’ coral is now lost. Were this destruction simply an aesthetic issue, the defacing of yet another small part of our planet’s beauty, we might be able to dismiss it with little more than a wistful shake of the head. But if we are to prevent the global catastrophe that Jack predicted, we have to ensure that the great swathes of carbon currently flowing round our planet are dramatically reduced. Coral and its microscopic allies lock vast quantities of the stuff away. All the efforts of the rainforests pale into insignificance compared with the rescue work our coral reefs do on our behalf. And in return we dynamite them for easier access to fishing grounds and poison them with hotel sewage, thus further polluting our planet and making our survival as a species less likely.

    Or am I being too dramatic? Will humankind really be brought to its knees because we’re too stupid to see how quickly we’re destroying our habitat, or are the oil executives and their allies right? Are we simply in the grip of an irresponsible moral panic, as unjustified as that of the medieval peasants who danced and flagellated their way round Europe in order to ward off impending doom? I’m sure there’s a bit of truth in such allegations. Throughout history human beings have believed the end of the world is at hand. Even Jesus and his disciples were convinced the last trump was about to blow its final riff. So it’s hardly surprising that the dark fantasies that lurk away inside us sometimes explode into glorious Technicolor when we hear the next set of depressing figures about carbon emissions or the unrelenting march of HIV and AIDS. But my personal experiences, reinforced by the work done by thousands of scientists worldwide, not to mention the inordinate amount of flooding that now bedevils my county each year, have convinced me Jack wasn’t deluded, and that this time there’s more going on in the world than a spot of Endtime paranoia.

    It was he who introduced me to the work of Jack London. At the time virtually all I read was the Socialist Worker and New Musical Express. But he decided my wild insurrectionism should be tempered by a little environmental understanding. First he persuaded me to flick through The Iron Heel, which had the kind of title that attracted me in those days, then he weaned me on to The Call of the Wild and White Fang. I grew to have a deep affection for London’s work. I loved his terrifying visions of the collapse of society, beautifully epitomised in the opening paragraphs of The Scarlet Plague, and the dramatic way he demonstrated how frail mankind is when exposed to the awesome power of nature. Not that he was a consistently good writer. There is a host of revealing contradictions in his work. He was a socialist and yet a bigot, an egalitarian fascinated by the power of elites, an idealist who saw our future only as a repeated cycle of hopelessness. His writing was also very uneven. But that was part of its attraction. It seemed to exude a gauche but powerful moral authority which was made all the more authentic by its lack of sophistication. In fact in my mind I tended to get Jack London and my Jack confused. I wasn’t sure if I really liked either of them, they both seemed a bit bossy and assertive, with an obsessive energy that could be intensely irritating. But deep down I knew they were both better than me, and that I had a lot to learn from them.

    I wonder what happened to my Jack. He must be well into his seventies. I doubt that he’s dead. Maybe he’s bought a shack in the mountains of Kentucky and is living the life of a solitary survivalist, with a rifle and plenty of food and liquor stashed away. As for Jack London, he died nearly a

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