Audio Book Bestseller Classics Collection - The Scarlet Plague

By the time Jack London released his post-apocalyptic novel "The Scarlet Plague" in 1912, the author was 36 years old--just four years shy of his premature passing in 1916--and yet had already managed to cram in more incident and adventure into those three dozen years than most folks do in their lifetime. Since his birth in San Francisco in 1876, he had worked on a sealing schooner, done a stint as an oyster pirate, participated in the Klondike Gold Rush (in 1897), played the part of a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War (1904), operated a ranch, been married twice, and had released over 100 short stories and a dozen novels, including, of course, "The Call of the Wild" (1903), "The Sea Wolf" (1904), "White Fang" (1906) and "Martin Eden" (1909). But many fans may not realize that London also created in the fantasy and sci-fi genres as well, in books such as "Before Adam" (1907), "The Iron Heel" (1908), "The Star Rover" (1915), and the book in question. This reader had not read any London since high school (a very long time ago), and had never read any of his works dealing with the fantastic, and am thus happy to report that "The Scarlet Plague" was a charming pleasure to take in. The short novel, London's 13th out of an eventual 23, originally appeared in the May - June 1912 issues of "London Magazine" (the world's oldest literary periodical, dating back to 1732!), made its first book appearance as a Macmillan hardcover in 1915, and was reprinted in the 2/49 issue of "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" magazine. As for me, I happened to read its latest incarnation, from Dover Publications, which reproduces the Macmillan hardcover complete with its over two dozen illustrations by one Gordon Grant. The book is part of Dover's current Doomsday Classics series of post-apocalyptic fiction; I had previously enjoyed Fritz Leiber's "The Night of the Long Knives" and Margaret St. Clair's "Sign of the Labrys" from this same collection of books.

In "The Scarlet Plague," the year is 2073, and most of mankind has been killed off by the pandemic of the title, which had struck in 2013...60 years earlier. On the desolate Cliff House beach near San Francisco, a long-bearded, 87-year-old man wearing a goatskin sits with his three grandchildren and tells them the story--probably for the umpteenth time--of what the world had been like in the olden days, and his own experiences during them. We learn that the old man's name was once James Howard Smith--although his three semibarbaric grandsons, Edwin, Hoo-Hoo and Hare-Lip, only refer to him as "Granser"--and that he had been a professor of English lit at UC-Berkeley, in the days before the plague had struck. London's short novel is primarily taken up by Smith's narrative, which is interrupted on occasion by one of the boys having to shoo away the wild wolves threatening their goat herd, or when the kids laugh in derision at Granser's "big words" and his tears of mournful nostalgia. Thus, we hear of the disease's onset, its symptoms and rapid course; how not a single nation in the world seemed to have been spared; learn of the riots that had ensued, and of Smith's emigration to the countryside with a small band of his fellow academics; witness Smith's three years of solitary living in Yosemite, and see what happened when he later returned to the completely overgrown Bay Area. It is a marvelously exciting and colorful story, told by the world's oldest living survivor to an audience of mocking simpletons.

By necessity, "The Scarlet Plague" is a simply written affair, being, in essence, the attempts of a once-learned man to make his illiterate, borderline savage descendants comprehend what had gone before. Thus, his painstaking efforts to teach them numbers greater than 10, and to make them understand the concept of germs, which the kids just cannot wrap their minds around, germs being invisible to the naked eye. Time and again, one of the boys will tell Granser to "talk sensible" and cut the "gabble," especially when the old man uses such impossible words as "scarlet" and "education"...and when he speaks in language such as this, in describing the Cliff House beach:

"...Where four million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam today, and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because of the Scarlet Death...."

And although Smith does keep his narrative simple (for the reader's ears, at least), the kids can't help but snicker in contempt, especially when Granser starts quoting various writers that he recalls. (A little research on the reader's part will reveal that those quotes come from Rudyard Kipling and the poets George Sterling and William Bliss Carman.) What with the book's cleanly written style and brief length, it is one that most readers will probably gobble down in a sitting or two, pulled in both by the action of its first half and the blighted desolation of its second.

As a predictor, London's track record here is perhaps 50/50. He was correct in foreseeing how devastating an incurable pandemic could be (he sadly did not live to witness the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918 - '20, which killed 75 million), and his guesstimate of 8 billion as the worldwide population in 2010 was not terribly off the correct mark of 6.9 billion. Unfortunately, his stated figure of 17 million as New York City’s population in 2013, the year of the plague, is more than double the actual figure, while his emphasis on the dirigible as the only means of air transport in 2013 comes off as more than a little quaint in today's Jet Age. Interestingly, when Smith finally discovers some other survivors after his sojourn in Yosemite, it is in Glen Ellen, CA...the same locale where London was building his Wolf House mansion, only to have it calamitously burn to the ground before he could move in, in 1913.

And, oh...if I may confess to another minor problem that I had with London's book here, it is that I was left with a feeling of wanting more; a feeling that London could have easily doubled the length of his novel by amplifying on Smith's adventures both during the actual plague and in the decades afterward. Still, there is a certain virtue in compactness and conciseness, and "The Scarlet Plague" certainly is a model of economical storytelling. (To be fair, I don't think that Edwin, Hoo-Hoo and Hare-Lip could possibly have sat still for another chapter's worth!) And there is surely no harm in leaving one's audience wanting more, right? As a matter of fact, I enjoyed this one so much that I hope to soon read London's first novel in the field of the fantastic, the pre-history outing "Before Adam." Stay tuned....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the Fantasy Literature website ... a perfect destination for all fans of Jack London....)

Considering the time in which this book is written, that explains the more rigid social structure to the characters. Only 60 years have supposedly passed since the Scarlet Plague so I found the decline in grammar a bit unbelievable but the overall idea (of what would happen if such a tragedy occurred) seemed pretty accurate. The story starts off with a boy and his grandfather taking a walk and they come upon a few more boys. As would be expected, the grandfather tells stories of what the world was like before the plague. The majority of his book is a monologue of his story- his life before and shortly after the plague.
I enjoyed listening but this is not a book I would pick up again.

The narrator (Kevin Theis) did well with the character voices but he had the cadence of an “English teacher”. He read the story to us rather than reading it as though he was telling us a story. There is a difference. Emphasis was put on words that would not be done if “telling” a story. Also, in the beginning, the boy was voiced to jovially which was inconsistent with the story. Once the narration got to the grandfathers recollections I found the reading by the narrator had improved and it was more comfortable to listen to.
I would listen to another book by this narrator. I don't think one book necessarily defines a narrator.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review

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.

Having been published over 100 years ago, it blew my mind how Jack London's creativeness was spot on in creating a sci-fi novel that could have been written by any author in today's society. I gave this book 4 stars having to take one away due to an error in the plot that had to do with the way people were perishing in the beginning of the book, though further into the story the explanation of the dead bodies did not correlate with the aforementioned way of death. Other than that flaw the story is genius. London is deeply intuitive regarding the way society will eventually re-establish itself. Therefore, that being my favorite part of the story.

Whereas, this tale is significantly more than just sci-fi. It is told by an exceedingly older emotional man named Granger, who was one of the few who survived the plague in 2013. I felt sad for Granger, who is a gentle soul, he is constantly tormented and disrespected by the heathen children that herd goats. Scarlet Plague is an important classic that takes a deep look into humanity and survival, making you think if your morals would stand up under severe conditions.

My question to you is would you try to preserve an important instrument of our culture if the world was ending for the next possible inhabitants to find? What?

“Thank you, Netgalley & Dover, for letting me give an honest review”

James Howard Smith is probably the last person who remembers the world before the Scarlet Plague killed off most of humanity and caused civilization to come crashing down. His grandsons and friends are a motley assortment of savages, mocking their "Granser" for his fancy speech and use of metaphors, but they are eager to hear stories of the world that was and the deadly Scarlet Plague. And so, on a beach outside San Francisco---once populated with thousands of bathers, now a desolate stretch of sand, crabs, and feral dogs---Granser Smith tells the story of the Scarlet Plague, telling of the world before and how it met its end with the spread of an incurable disease.

The more post-apocalyptic lit I read, the more I realize few things have changed since the genre's inception. Reading The Scarlet Plague reinforces that opinion: it reads as the poster child for all the apocalypses which have come since, covering many of the themes and scenes that are now standard fare. Abandoned roads and railways, overgrown with vegetation and menaced by fearsome animals? Check. A party of terrified men, women, and children, fortifying themselves and their meager supplies and fending off armed robbers? Check. The enlightened professor, now sitting around a campfire wearing rags and animals skins? Check.

These are images we've seen countless times in fiction, but this is one of the stories where they originated, where they were fresh and new. Yet London's choice of a contagion as the cause of the apocalypse gives the story a timeless feel, in our age of SARS, swine flu, and anti-vaxxers... It's a bit eerie to think this was a startling fresh apocalypse in 2012, while the same fear of infectious plague is still destroying fictional civilization a hundred years later, in books like 2014's Station Eleven.

London possessed a fine hand for naturalistic writing which served his caveman fantasy Before Adam well; his second SF novel, The Iron Heel, posited a Socialist revolt against a fascist dystopia, though I found it far too didactic and lacking any of London's natural grace. The Scarlet Plague mixes elements from both. London's future society of 2012 also has its ruling oligarchy attacked by its working class, though both classes ending up as equals in the post-civilization world. Instead of presenting a hero of the working class, the main character is one of the elites---a college professor---though he's less suited for leadership than the brutish Chauffeur, who takes the wife of one of the oligarchs. London reinforces the class divide with the characters' speech: the elites are unrealistically haughty and detached; the lower-class, and future-barbarians, speak in slurs and broken English.

Humanity's descent from civilization to barbarism allows London to pull out his naturalist prose---human nature red in fang and tooth, a devolution of the human animal. London's implications of human savagery and the fleeting nature of civilization---similar to Robert E. Howard's belief that barbarism was humanity's natural state---are recurring themes in the genre, unpleasantly believable having seen the lawlessness after catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina. It's also a bit shocking when London posits that within a few generations, humanity will have reverted back to pure savagery, though I think this may be more commentary on classism, as Granser mentions at one time that the fictional ruling elite was "breeding" the working-classes for strength and stamina over intelligence.

The Scarlet Plague is a fascinating historical anecdote, and overall not a bad read even though what was fresh in 1912 became today's overused genre tropes. Despite its weaknesses---most of the characters existing as stock archetypes to populate the catastrophe, making it feel something like a simple moral fable---London's gritty naturalistic writing paints a beautiful grotesque picture of civilization's last days. It's a quick read, maybe a few hours, and it offers vivid images of how London in 1912 thought the society 2012 could look like---and how it could collapse. For those with an interest in early SF---particularly early apocalypses---it's well worth reading.

(Disclaimer: I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an open and honest review.)

Jack London is a writer I greatly admire, as much (or more) for his work ethic as for anything he ever wrote, though I did love both The Call of the Wild and White Fang when I read them as a teenager. In fact, they started me off on months worth of reading books with animals as central characters. Which I eventually moved away from, because, the farther you got from London, the worse the books got. But I digress...

We often think of post-apocalyptic literature as being a new phenomenon but, really, it's not. In its modern iteration, it goes back almost 200 years, all the way to Mary Shelley, but even ancient cultures wrote apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories. With that in mind, London's The Scarlet Plague isn't all the old and isn't all that original in what it does. In fact, there are strong echoes of Shelley's The Last Man in London's book.

What it does do that is interesting, though, is that it jumps 100 years ahead of when London wrote it and set that year as the apocalypse but, then, it jumps ahead another 60 years as its setting and has the last survivor of the collapse of civilization telling the story to his grandchildren. In that, we get both the story of the apocalypse and what happens after the apocalypse.

Of course, one of the big draws for a book like this is seeing how the author was seeing his projected future. London miss-projected on flight and filled the air with dirigibles rather than airplanes. But he got wireless communication even if he did also keep newspapers. I suppose the downfall of physical print media would have been unfathomable during it's rise at the beginning of the 20th century. Amazingly, he also pegged the world population.

There's a section where Smith is trying to explain diseases and germs to his grandchildren. That bit is particularly interesting in light of the current controversy over vaccines. I'm going to hazard a guess and say that London would have been pro-vaccine.

It's a fairly short read, so, in that, it's certainly worth it. It took me less than two hours. And you can get it free for the Kindle, so it's hard to lose there, too. Seriously, it's more than worth it just to see the perspective of someone writing about now from 100 years ago. It's not the greatest thing ever, not even great by London standards, but it's good. And better than a lot of drivel coming out today.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London (yes, that Jack London) is a short, 58-page ebook released by Dover Publishing under the Doomsday Classics header. Kind of a depressing name for older dystopic books, wouldn't you say?

The Scarlet Plague takes place in roughly 2073, 60 years after the devastation of the Scarlet Plague contagion. An elder man tells the story of the plague to three other people: it takes place in California, bring down hundreds of millions of people within a matter of days, and leaves behind scatters of tribes across the western United States. These tribes are survivors from different social classes and occupations, made primal and foraging by the Plague. This leads to the present day of the book consisting of people who scoff at the elder and his ability to read and recount his former life as a university professor. All-around okay and decent cowboy-dialect storytelling for its time.

Even a century ago, adventure writer Jack London was writing of a world gone bad – the remnants of a once great civilization – sinking into the barbarity of mankind’s beginnings.

A plague has devastated the earth – a fairly recognizable sub theme in modern thriller literature – witness Stephen King’s magnum opus,THE STAND, of a number of years ago – and the small fragment of mankind, one of several groups apparently, is made up of one 87 year old who remembers the old days – and three boys, who seem to represent those parts of society London saw as the last evolved society.

And London’s belief is not an optimistic one, for he foresees mankind repeating its mistakes, of the rise of a ruling business class and the rest of society its subjects, and then that society collapsing only to become once again over centuries, the same society.

The Scarlet Plague might not be the absolute grand-daddy of apocalypse by plague stories (Mary Shelley's The Last Man was written 75 years earlier) but it's certainly one of the first, and it's obviously a base on which more recent authors have built their works. Published in 1912 by Jack London (of Sea Wolf, White Fang, and The Call of the Wild fame), The Scarlet Plague is the first example I know of of the elderly survivor telling the story of the apocalypse to those born after it.

In this case, the survivor is James Howard Smith, Professor of English at Berkeley. He is the last person alive who lived before the plague that killed almost everyone in the world, 60 years earlier. Now, he sits around a campfire with his grandsons, who he calls savages, and describes the events of the last days of the old world.

And the story he tells would be instantly recognizable to anyone who's read The Stand or similar books. The plague comes on without warning, and kills within an hour. People try to sequester themselves in their homes, but once one person is infected the disease ravages entire families. He specifically mentions governments covering up the reality of how dangerous the plague is, bodies piled in the streets, violence, murder and mayhem.

He flees San Francisco, meets up with a handful of other survivors, and then their descendants begin to form tribal groups known as the Chauffeurs, the Santa Rosans, the Sacrementos, the Palo Altos, and so on. Those descendants quickly revert back to what Smith refers to as the basest savagery. They wear skins, and carry bows and slings. They're superstitious, have no concept of numbers, and are constantly interrupting and playing tricks on their grandfather as he tells his story.

Overall, I enjoyed it very much. It's only about 100 pages or so, and it does sort of drag towards the end as he describes who married who in which tribe, but it's a pillar of the genre, and so anyone who's a fan should read it at least once.

It's out of copyright, so is freely available in any format you could want. I did the Librivox audio book version, and the quality of the recording was great.

Sixty years after a plague killed billions of people, an old man tries to convey to his three grandchildren what the world was once like so long ago.
The cultured, civilized world of mass communication and technology abruptly gave way to a primitive, savage world of cruelty and barbarism. The survivors and their descendents now live like their stone-age forebears: wearing animal skins, hunting with bows and arrows and believing in superstition.
In describing the plague's onslaught, the old man tells his grandchildren of the chaos and degradation that wiped out civilization. Money became worthless, the streets of burning cities were littered with corpses, animals grew wild as mankind lost his supremacy over nature.
The three boys have a lot of trouble understanding the words "Granser" uses, due to their lack of education. (Even the word "education" is something the boys have never heard of.) Nevertheless, the old man does the best he can, in spite of the children's limited vocabulary.
It's interesting to compare "The Scarlet Plague", which was written in 1912, to the more widely-known "Earth Abides". Both books are set in the same place. They both contain that sense of nostalgia, where old men, left over from the "lost world" yearn for a past that was more attractive.
This could well be the blueprint for life-after-the-apocalypse stories. If this story hadn't been written, their would probably never have been such books as "Earth Abides", "The Day of the Triffids", "Empty World" or "The Stand."

I found this book among my ninth birthay presents and loved it from the first page. what got to me was the description of a way in which everything we know could be destroyed in a few weeks. Also my boyish imagination and dark side were thrilled about the possibility of being left alone in a city, free to do anything i wanted. As the book advanced in explaining the effects of solitude and the need for information about what had happened I found myself questioning my readiness to face such a situation. I highly recommend this book as a way to introduce science fiction to new readers. You must be aware of several objectionable premises set by the author in terms of a racist future society but also a few "wish it were like that" plots which place as the highest paid occupations those like the ones performed by a junior poetry proffesor. My short review has to end by saying that this book has been a dear memory of mine for the past 29 years and writing about it and recommending it to others it's a way to say thank you to Mr. Jack London a great writer and a reason why today I rather read than almost anything else in my spare time. Thank you, and please forgive my primitive english. Milton Roussel, [email protected]

After a plague that wipes out most of mankind, there are just 40 people are left alive in the San Francisco Bay area. One of them is Professor James Howard Smith, a former English professor at Berkeley, who was 27 years old at the time of the plague. Now an old man, aware of his coming death, he tries to pass his wisdom to his grandkids, who (like all grandkids), have little interest in what old men have to say. Those who were born after the disaster are different to those who have lived through it. They have only seen a ruthless life in a wild and unkempt world in which wild beasts far outnumber humans. The kids place scant value on the wisdom that feeble old "Granser" is so desperate to impart.

Very good `last man or last people' disaster book, and reading it today, knowing that it was written over 100 years ago, makes it far more interesting - except that I kept forgetting that fact, as the book was very timeless.

A post-holocaust classic! After the Scarlet Plague wiped out most of mankind, only a few survive in the SF Bay area. The story is told through a interesting old man, a former professor, who has a good world view of life before, during, and after the disaster.

He makes a good narrator and is quite a good way to present the book. Frightening in parts, the book is a very good survivalist or SHTF story.

If you enjoy post Apocalyptic `thinking' thrillers, you'll enjoy this book as much as I did!

A short read by Jack London that paints the collapse of modern society by a super bug that kills well over 99% of society and drives the survivors back to the Stone Age. Written in 1912 it tells of the demise due to the scarlet plague in 2012 from the eyes of an aging survivor in his waning years. It was a very engrossing read

Written in 1912, Jack London had an interesting view of what the world would look like in the year 2013 when a pandemic swept across the world killing billions of people. The story is told from the memories of one of the survivors, now an old man in 2073.

The dystopian genre has certainly matured in the past century, but the Scarlet Plague must be credited as one of the founding works. Any true fan of dystopian literature needs to read this piece.

It's a short book, but very interesting and satisfying.
Jack London uses the dialogue of one of the characters to tell the story of how the world became the way it is in the book.
Have already read it 2x.

Jack London's Scarlet plague was well written and memorable. This recently produced rewrite is a dreadful travesty, poorly prepared and in no way comparable to the original classic. It is not deserving of the name and should not be so marketed.

The Scarlet Plague provides graphic detail, vivid word-pictures, and remarkable prophetic accuracy that make it one of the most memorable post-holocaust stories. One of the more intelligent and well written post-apocalyptic books written, it is very timeless. While written long ago, its very much up to date, considering technology would not have been invented that we all know about today. In some ways these kids who are growing up after the plague are better off then we would be who would be lost without all of our marvels.

I can recommend this to any apocalyptic, collapse or disaster, doomsday book lover. Better then most, in fact one of the best.