Description

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The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction short story written by Jack London. The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an epidemic, the Red Death, which has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of the few survivors of the pre-plague era left alive in the San Francisco area and tells his tale to his two grandsons.

About the Author

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Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. Considered a pioneer in the flourishing world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to become a worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from his fiction alone. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.