A review by beetific
The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

3.0

Super quick read (does this qualify as a novella?) and interestingly enough, my first foray into Jack London (I'm not sure how I've made it this long without getting through The Call of the Wild). I think my rating reflects the fact that there's just so much apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction nowadays that this novel doesn't really present anything "new". I thought the almost total regression of civilization part was really interesting (although not entirely believable that we would have completely descended into caveman-like behavior/speech within three generations) as was the discussion of the biology of the plague. I wasn't really sure what the point of the story was, however, because it felt like the old man was simply recounting his experience of the plague without an end goal- his grandsons didn't really seem to have any intention of taking any nuggets of wisdom from his tale?

It's really cool that Jack London almost exactly predicted the population of the world today almost a hundred years ago, though!!