Showing results for "The Scarlet Plague" in Anthologies & Short Stories

The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, was the first example of a post-apocalyptic fiction novel in modern literature. Set in a ravaged and wild America, the story takes place in 2073, 60 years after the spread of the Red Death, an uncontrollable epidemic that depopulated and nearly destroyed the world in 2013. One of the few survivors, James Howard Smith, alias “Granser”, tells his incredulous and near-savage grandsons how the pandemic spread in the world and about the reactions of the people to contagion and death.

The story of The Scarlet Plague takes place in 2073 in the San Francisco area, 60 years after an apocalyptic pandemic called the Red Death or Scarlet Plague has depopulated the Earth. James Smith, one of the survivors, lives with his grandsons who are hunter-gatherers in a tribal world. He relates the horror of the plague to them, and tells them of the time when he was a professor of English, and of the start of the pandemic. His grandsons, who are of limited cognitive ability, refuse to believe him; they cannot believe that the disease was spread by germs.