-Book review-

A tired old man in goatskin slowly walking behind his alert, primitive like grandson towards camp. Their progress is difficult through the densely overgrown path that was once a speeding railway. This is the opening scene in “The Scarlet Plague”. I was surprised to find that this post-apocalyptic, dystopian  tale was written by none other than Jack London. Many have read his Klondike adventure novel “The Call of the Wild” or short story, “To Build a Fire”. His years of living as a hobo and traversing the Yukon gave him a lot of material for his stories.

The story continues by bringing “Granser” to camp where the other grandsons have a fire going and some of the shellfish he so enjoys. The California coast is nothing like it was sixty years earlier when as an english literature professor he enjoyed the luxuries of an academic life in a country ruled by industrial magnets. They traveled about on their personal air ships and life was very good.

It’s easy to guess the times in which London wrote by references such as these. It may very well have been a reasonable assumption in 1912 that lighter than air blimps and dirigibles would be the elites choice of transportation. But by 2013, things took an unexpected turn as The Scarlet Plague ran its course and wiped out most of the world’s population.

As he recounts the story to his grandsons who both urge him for more story and ridicule him for his unrecognizable words and phrases, the chaos and violence of the plague still touches the old man with raw emotion. His hope for the future as he looks at his savage grandsons is not favorable.

With quotes like, ” The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization”, one senses London,  has truly seen the worst of mankind.

I found this book enjoyable for it’s human introspection and decent storytelling. If you’re looking for an uplifting, feel good read this is not for you. To be honest, I grabbed it on my Kindle because it was free but I would definately buy it. I might even re-read it someday which I rarely do.

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