"The Scarlet Plague" by Jack London (1912)

This exceptionally far-sighted vision of the “plague-fall” of civilization as we know it was a brilliant precursor of the end-of-the-world variant of the science-fiction genre that has attracted so much attention in recent years.

The Scarlet Plague was first published in the May-June 1912 issues of the U.K. monthly periodical London Magazine.

It was first published in book form in 1915 with a large number of illustrations by Gordon Grant that are all shown here.

(20,200 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

The Scarlet Plague (e-book)