The Scarlet Plague |
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Author:
| London, Jack |
Introduction by:
| Battles, Matthew |
Series title: | The Radium Age Science Fiction Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-1-935869-50-4 |
Publication Date: | May 2012 |
Publisher: | Cursor
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $12.95 |
Book Description:
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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...
More DescriptionJack 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.