The Scarlet Plague

By Jack London

2013 the world ended. Now it's 60 years later.

This was an interesting short story. About 90 pages. A grandfather is telling his grandsons the story of the scarlet (or red if you prefer, like some of the boys do) plague. The tale takes place 60 years after. Only about 450 people live on the west coast of North America. Wow what a death it must have been.

The story really didn't go into detail about how the people now live but it touches a bit on it. It was interesting to see that not much of anything is used from the old world. There's no electricity, gas, airplanes. In fact it would seem that they have gone to a preindustrial revolution lifestyle.

Also, like in Threads, English speech and literacy has deteriorated. The grandfather talks about how he saved books, and lessons on how to learn how to read them, so some day the knowledge of his world could be rediscovered. Yet his grandsons can't read and they chide him for using fancy words all the time.

I also found it interesting that London took a bit of a different approach than many of the other PA books I've read. With so many people dying the grandfather talked about how no one was left to run/keep up modern technology. The backgrounds of the few survivors he talks about were mostly domestic servants, or the recipients of their services. One of the boy's grandfathers is said to have been mechanical but he didn't see fit to pass on any of his knowledge.

This was an interesting story and I quite enjoyed it. Though it is a bit disheartening to think of humans going out with such a whimper. As the story is public domain you can read it free online here. I read it on my phone. It wasn't bad for such a short story.