The Scarlet Plague

By Jack London

Originally published in “London Magazine” in 1912, “The Scarlet Plague” is a post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Jack London. The year is 2073 and its sixty years after the 'Red Death' decimated the population of the earth. A survivor called James Smith lives in the San Francisco area, travelling around with his grandsons who live as primeval hunter-gatherers. One day, he recounts his life before the epidemic and tells of how the 'Scarlet Death' came to be. This volume will appeal to lovers of early science fiction and is not to be missed by fans and collectors of London's fantastic work. John Griffith London (1876 – 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist. He was an early pioneer of commercial magazine fiction, becoming one of the first globally-famous celebrity writers who were able to earn a large amount of money from their writing. London is famous for his contributions to early science fiction and also notably belonged to "The Crowd", a literary group an Francisco known for its radical members and ideas. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528787062

Jack London

Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist and journalist. Born in San Francisco to Florence Wellman, a spiritualist, and William Chaney, an astrologer, London was raised by his mother and her husband, John London, in Oakland. An intelligent boy, Jack went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley before leaving school to join the Klondike Gold Rush. His experiences in the Klondike—hard labor, life in a hostile environment, and bouts of scurvy—both shaped his sociopolitical outlook and served as powerful material for such works as “To Build a Fire” (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906). When he returned to Oakland, London embarked on a career as a professional writer, finding success with novels and short fiction. In 1904, London worked as a war correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War and was arrested several times by Japanese authorities. Upon returning to California, he joined the famous Bohemian Club, befriending such members as Ambrose Bierce and John Muir. London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905, the same year he purchased the thousand-acre Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County, California. London, who suffered from numerous illnesses throughout his life, died on his ranch at the age of 40. A lifelong advocate for socialism and animal rights, London is recognized as a pioneer of science fiction and an important figure in twentieth century American literature.

Book preview

THE

SCARLET PLAGUE

By

JACK LONDON

First published in 1915

This edition published by Read Books Ltd.

Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Contents

Jack London

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Jack London

Jack London was born in San Francisco, USA in 1876. In order to support his working class family, he left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a string of unskilled jobs, before returning briefly to graduate. Around this time, London discovered the public library in Oakland, and immersed himself in the literature of the day. In 1894, after a spell working on merchant ships, he set out to experience the life of the tramp, with a view to gaining an insight into the national class system and the raw essence of the human condition. At the age of nineteen, upon returning, London was admitted to the University of California in Berkeley, but left before graduating after just six months due to financial pressures.

London published his first short story, ‘Typhoon off the Coast of Japan’, in 1893. At this point, he turned seriously to writing, producing work at a prolific rate. Over the next decade, he began to be published in major magazines of the day, producing some of his best-remembered stories, such as ‘To Build a Fire’. Starting in 1902, London turned to novels, producing almost twenty in fifteen years. Of these, his best-known are Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set during the Klondike Gold Rush. He also produced a number of popular and still widely-anthologized stories, such as ‘An Odyssey of the North’ and ‘Love of Life’. London even proved himself as an excellent journalist, reporting on the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

London was an impassioned advocate of socialism and workers’ rights, and these themes inform a number of his works – most notably his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, published in 1907. He even ran unsuccessfully as the Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland on two occasions. London died in 1916, aged 40.

Illustrated By Gordon Grant

I

THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad. But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across it in a green wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a man's body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a piece of rusty iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and the ties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at a connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view. The tie had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long enough for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as the road was, it was manifest that it had been of the mono-rail type.

An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly, for the old man was very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous, and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude skull-cap of goat-skin protected his head from the sun. From beneath this fell a scant fringe of stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a large leaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way of his feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest and shoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs, withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn and scars and scratches betoken long years of exposure to the elements.

The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles to the slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment—a ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through which he had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve years old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of a pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.

On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his neck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He was as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread. In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes—blue, deep blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore into aft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled things, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain an endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing was acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically. Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparent quiet—heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds—whether they were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only in lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful of earth into the entrance of his hole.

Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given him a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touching him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of

Reviews for The Scarlet Plague

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.”

[karl6steel · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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!!

[rbeffa_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sylviac_43 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[la2bkk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sparkleandchico · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jimsnopes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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...

[benjamin.duffy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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?

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[polaris4_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A remarkably prescient tale for our times told briskly by one of the great masters of the short story.

[bibleblaster · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.