Radium Age science fiction novel by Jack London: The Scarlet Plague

Jack London’s 1912 science fiction novel The Scarlet Plague, which is part of HiLobrow's Radium Age library, is now available at Amazon.com.

Jack London’s plague novel, in which the world’s population has been reduced to a few scattered bands of primitive scavengers, has influenced subsequent science-fiction apocalypses and dystopias — from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four to the movies Road Warrior and Idiocracy.

Outside the ruins of San Francisco, a former UC Berkeley professor of literature recounts the chilling sequence of events which led to his current lowly state — a gruesome pandemic which killed nearly every living soul on the planet, in a matter of days. Modern civilization tottered and fell, and a new race of barbarians — the western world's brutalized workers — assumed power everywhere.

Over the space of a few decades, all learning has been lost. Unlike the professor on Gilligan's Island, the narrator is the least useful member of a thriving tribe, whose younger generation (who boast names like Hoo-Hoo and Har-Lip) are mostly descended from a the tribe's brutish founder. He was known only by the title of his former occupation, so the tribe's name is: Chauffeur.

A bleak, at times darkly humorous glimpse into the future by an author best known for red-blooded adventure yarns set in the Klondike Gold Rush.

The Scarlet Plague

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://twitter.com/Jean_no Jean-noël Lafargue

To read too : “The Iron Heel”, a novel that is the mother of all dystopias, I’ll say. Maybe a little bit socialist for americans to read. There is also a horrible history (don’t remember the name) where it is suggested to kill… every inhabitant of China, to avoid overpopulation !
- eviladrian
  
  The Unparalleled Invasion
  http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/StrengthStrong/invasion.html
  - millie fink
    
    Yeah, London got sucked pretty deep into that whole Yellow Peril thing, the fantasized, racist menace of his day.
http://twitter.com/jjdaddyo jjdaddyo

Not to do HiLo Books out of their money or anything but this book is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from Amazon or Gutenberg.org.
BDiamond

As mentioned before, freely available at Project Gutenberg, at this link: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21970
GeorgeMokray

Read it when I was a kid. Always liked it andwanted to read it again. Somebody should make the movie.
Fred Talmadge

Sounds like a darker version of “Earth Abides”
- Preston Sturges
  
  Looks like “Earth Abides” ripped off the character of the old man survivor and his grandsons.
http://profile.yahoo.com/AFFTTTOV2V2RM5XGUX5FF5NHMU Jeff

Or, you could read it for free at Project Gutenberg!
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21970/21970-h/21970-h.htm
Snig

Remember reading Star Rover by him, about prisoners escaping by entering their past lives. It was sort of scifi. I was about ten when I read it, so not sure how it’d stand up today.
Roy Trumbull

I was going to do a narration of this story but the Guttenberg text had numerous typos.
- beepbeep
  
  Were you reading the .txt version? I’ve noticed lots of typos with them, but took some of them (Like the Pickwick Papers) and redid the entire books into .odt documents. A bit tedious, but I found it to be an interesting experiment. What you should probably do is get an ebook version like EPUB and also the free reader Calibre at http://calibre-ebook.com/. This works beautifully!
http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

Eh. An earlier version. And more sensationalist and class-warfare focused.

And not a pessimistic as “Earth Abides.”

Both fun reads, however.
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  this was a reply to @Fred Talmadge
http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

Eh. An earlier version. And more sensationalist and class-warfare focused.

And not a pessimistic as “Earth Abides.”

Both fun reads, however.
dayhat

or drm free audiobook from the terrific folks at Librivox:

http://librivox.org/the-scarlet-plague-by-jack-london/
dayhat

or drm free audiobook from the terrific folks at Librivox:

http://librivox.org/the-scarlet-plague-by-jack-london/
dayhat

or drm free audiobook from the terrific folks at Librivox:

http://librivox.org/the-scarlet-plague-by-jack-london/
Preston Sturges

I read a true story he wrote about exploring in Alaska and how the ships rat killing terrier would go ashore and wander around alone. London climbed a glacier and the dog followed. They ended up opposite sides of a crevasse. He had to coax the dog across a very thin snow bridge or he would have had to abandon it on the glacier, and the dog knew it. Anyway, the dog made it. But he sure could pack action, suspense, and emotion into a couple pages.
Preston Sturges

The old man describes pellagra as an infection when t was actually a B3 deficiency. Vitamin deficiencies are awful and pellagra would often kill many children in orphanages. The lesions just rip the skin right off a person, but it’s not an infection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra
- http://thoughtsonroleplaying.blogspot.com/ Sereg
  
  If your skin is ripped off for any reason, the wound is likely to get infected, especially when you don’t have a concept of sterile bandaging.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    The wikipedia photos don’t show how gruesome it is.
    
    It affected children in orphanages who were fed white bread and white rice, and since it would often afflict several people simultaneously, it was assumed to be an infection.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    The wikipedia photos don’t show how gruesome it is.
    
    It affected children in orphanages who were fed white bread and white rice, and since it would often afflict several people simultaneously, it was assumed to be an infection.
Rich Keller

Jack London started the Post-Apocalypse Trope of naming groups after their ancestors’ jobs. Leela from Dr. Who was from a tribe named after the survey team her ancestors had been part of. If London had written this today, the Chauffeur tribe could be called the Barristas.
- Preston Sturges
  
  …who would be recognized by their piercings and tribal tattoos.
- Preston Sturges
  
  …who would be recognized by their piercings and tribal tattoos.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    And most likely killed and eaten by the gay leather/drag bikers.
    - Preston Sturges
      
      The “Leather Daddy Klan.”
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Leather and Feather