Impressions - The Scarlet Plague

"It was in the summer of 2013 that the Plague came. I was twenty-seven years old, and well do I remember it."

 The Scarlet Plague is a novella written by the American author Jack London in 1912. We all know (at least, all of us Americans know) that London was an influential, classic author whose many well-known novels, novellas and short stories taking place in the times of the Gold Rush and often involving Native Americans, wildlife and intrusive capitalist society played a great part in inspiring many of America's most famous writers, from Hemingway to Steinbeck to Kerouac.  It is therefore somewhat surprising to discover that the socialist, journalist travel-writer actually wrote, of all things, post-apocalyptic science fiction, of which one notable example is titled The Scarlet Plague.

 

There are many strange features surrounding this story, but I will start at the beginning and let you judge the curious oddities for yourself.
The year is 2072, and the location is San Francisco -- or rather, what is left of San Francisco, for now it is nothing but nearly void wilderness, spotted with a few remnants of a long out-dated technology taking the form of an abandoned railroad. Along this runway walks a wizened, elderly man and a boy-archer, both attired primitively in animal skins and leaves. The old man, called Granser by the boy (presumably a form of "Grandpa"), reveals in his speech his knowledge of a bygone time: his vocabulary indicates a civilized learning and his reminiscences recall what once used to be and what is now. For instance, after coming across a bear, he remembers fondly how bears used to be a treat to look at in the circus, where families would take their little children on warm weekends; and when the boy shows him a silver dollar from 2012, he mentions how money used to mean something (the boy, Edwin, doesn't understand the meaning of money) and he goes on to describe how Morgan the Fifth was elected President of the USA by a Board of Magnates.

The two continue on their trail, heading towards what can vaguely be called a campsite, where two other boys, Hoo-Hoo and Hare-Lip, were waiting for them, preparing a meal of boiled crabs. Already at this point the old man reveals something of the titular plague: in 2013, sixty years before the events in the story, the Scarlet Death, an incurable, rapidly spreading epidemic, appeared like a sudden wild-fire and wiped out a good percentage of the population of America, if not the whole world.
After several more instances of reminiscing about the good ol' times when men were for the most part civilized (very unlike the three savage boys who behave worse than beasts) and you could buy mayonnaise in the shops and ride 200 miles an hour in dirigibles, the old man endeavors to teach the three boys the tale of the Great Plague, or the Red Death as the boys call it, and of his own history.

In the second part of this story, the old man describes how the Scarlet Plague ravaged the lands. He begins by explaining that, at the time, as in, 2012, there were four million inhabitants in San Francisco and over eight billion inhabitants on Earth -- in Europe alone there were over fifteen hundred million people in 2000.
Needless to say, I have reached the point where a lot of oddities occur in London's story. But I digress.

The old man was a 27-year old professor by the name of James Howard Smith, who taught English Literature at the University of California and was part of the ruling classes, who possessed both the land, the machines and the so-called "freemen" -- food-gatherers and hunters, impelled to provide the ruling classes with food under penalty of severe punishment or fatal starvation.

Despite the best efforts of bacteriologists and advances in medical technology, a bizarre form of disease appeared in 2013, a more severe illness than that which appeared in 1947 and paralyzed infants and was finally eradicated 11 years later.



The third part of the story, which goes into undisturbed detail of the apocalypse and its aftermath, comes next. From this part on, it is best left read by oneself without my hardly sufficient summaries, for the story takes on a most interesting turn. The Scarlet Plague comes with a savage rapidity, attacks and kills people within hours, even within minutes, regardless of their age or social station. Wireless communication is soon destroyed, along with any semblance of law and order, leaving the people ignorant and fending for themselves. The last message received from abroad was that a scientist in Germany had discovered a serum -- alas, far too late and to no avail.

The rich who had attempted an escape via airships contracted the disease and their dirigibles fell from the sky; shocked people in the middle of driving got sick and died in their cars, causing burning havoc in the roads; violent brutes and drunkards grew hysterical and committed senseless crimes ranging from the murder of a national poet and his wife to jewel robbery; and family members grew sick and died right before the people's eyes. The dreaded sign was, as the name of the disease suggests, a reddening of the face, then convulsions, then a cold numbness that rises from the feet up to the heart, all the while the      
                                                 victim is conscious to the last of his horrific fate.

The more intellectual, decent and harmless of the stranded people, including Professor Smith, rally into large buildings and try to maintain survival. the members of Smith's group hole themselves up in the University campus. They practiced a strict no-sick-man policy, which often ended in throwing out the still alive, red-faced victims while their near and dear ones frantically tried to save them. Despite severe hygiene, enough nourishment and sealed off walls, which were carefully guarded from prowlers and menaces, the group thinned down by the hundreds.






Eventually, Professor Smith left the building along with the group and began to traverse the beginning of a post-apocalyptic wilderness, for some time coming across neither civilization nor even another human being, until finally he encounters a bonfire, which leads him to the closest thing to a civilized site that he had seen in a long while. Here begins Smith's path into the various tribes of survivors that soon formed after the Plague, tribes consisting of people from all walks of life, from a beautiful millionaire's daughter to a scruffy alcoholic. Under the most primitive of conditions, these people continued to survive, the Scarlet Plague having apparently blown well over. 

And then, we are once again in the settings of the first chapter, but armed now with the knowledge that it might take several centuries before mankind can recover from the devastating blow it had received, perhaps as an act of God for all the oppression and immorality that humanity had sunk into.

The style of London's writing is, as always, succinct but smart, which doubtless carried into Hemingway's own style. There is no purple prose and each paragraph is quite to the point, but far from lacking in what I call a semi-lyrical "literary rhythm", the syntax and the choice of vocabulary are enough to evoke stunning images and strong feelings in few words. Crass contrasts are drawn from the verbal and behavioral differences in Professor Smith and the three boys, creating a sorrowful effect of the pathetic fate of mankind.

As for the amount of creativity produced in this work, I need hardly say much. I am sure that you've noticed something peculiar about the story. Wireless messaging, widespread use of dirigibles, the incidental use of 2012/2013 -- much is predicted eerily correct about the future, with a few glaring miscalculations which are quite understandable, starting firstly with the foreseeing of a world-changing calamity at the hands of a fatal contagion and ending with the widespread use of airships or zeppelin-like dirigibles.
I understand the absurdity of classifying this work or Mr. London himself as oracles, but as is always the case when a story that attempts to foretell the future is reviewed by the generation whose era it was trying to predict, the correct and the (seemingly) incorrect predictions will be verified or thrown aside -- though, at least in this case, they should not be seen as examples of clairvoyance.


The veracity of certain predictions made in the story are arguable, such as the Board of Magnates appointing a president rather than the people electing one the democratic way. Officially, most western countries, USA included, have democratic elections for their presidents and prime ministers and what not, but unofficially it is indeed worth noting how much influence certain campaign contributions have and how secure the voting system really is. A similar underlying vibe can be found behind several more superficially erring predictions of London's, but to enumerate each and every one of them would require a separate article and a certain amount of determination, neither of which I would like to put forth, seeing as I am a lazy drip who pretended to have been too busy to blog these past few months when in reality I was spending a good amount of my time playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, all of which sort of deal with calamities too, come to think of it.

Overall Impression

The novella is certainly an odd one, and halfway through I forgot that it had initially been written by Jack London in 1912 and I was beginning to think that it was a very recent work. All that talk about wireless messaging must have thrown me off, along with the description of Smith's group holing up in the Chemistry building of the university campus, which reminded me of countless stories from Zombie films, games and books.

If you are interested in seeing an early prototype of post-apocalyptic fiction, then you will definitely be interested in this. If you are interested in reading Jack London attempting to predict what may happen in 2013, then you will be doubly interested.

As for myself, I was completely taken aback, moreso than the average person, specifically because I had written roughly two years ago a post-apocalyptic novella that took place in 2073, completely unawares of the existence of The Scarlet Plague. The similarities between the two novellas end there, however, because in my story, The Leech, the apocalypse's aftermath is not quite so drastic and has left many sick (but not necessarily dead) humans in its wake.

Final Rating: 6

It may seem like a low rating, especially after how much I've praised the story and what an admirer I am of Jack London's works, but hear me out: The story does not feel very much like a story at all, but is more like a description of how the Scarlet Plague came about and what happened after it from the perspective of Professor Smith. It is far from badly written, but it is certainly lacking somewhat in plot.
My chief peeve is that The Scarlet Plague seems incomplete and in a way un-motivated (as in, there is little more gearing the protagonist during the spreading of the Plague other than survival, which comes to him rather easily, actually).

The Scarlet Plague would make a marvelous prologue or introduction to a bigger book that dealt with the apocalypse, alas I'm afraid it's a bit too late to call dibs on it now or to prod Mr London into expanding the novella into a novel, since the book is too well known in Londonian circles and Jack London has been dead for almost a century. 
(I am, of course, joking. It's not nice to steal anyone's ideas.)

Anywho, The Scarlet Plague was an interesting read as a piece of speculative fiction, but it definitely feels less like an actual story and more like a descriptive first-hand witnessing of the apocalypse.

With that, I have given you my impression of The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, and I leave you with another bit of fiction describing the distant future of the early 21st century:

[Edit -- originally, here was a video of "The Humans Are Dead" by The Flight of the Conchords, but the video has since been removed for reasons of douchebag law-makers, so you will have to play the song in your head shortly after reading this and pretend that I made a funny.]

Have a nice day and watch out for red-faced, convulsing zombies and murderous robots!
- Wager

The abandoned railway photograph was created by the incredibly talented freshberries.
The stunning picture of post-apocalyptic San Francisco was painted by ThoRCX.
Go check out both great artists now and give them my love *cat-grin*.
The illustrations accompanying my text originated from one of the earliest, if not the very first, stand-alone version of The Scarlet Plague, published by the MacMillan company and illustrated by Gordon Grant.