Jack London wrote this apocalyptic novella in 1910, nine years before the great scourge of the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic that decimated humanity. Despite his visionary gaze, The Scarlet Plague does not deal at heart with the epidemic that its title announces, but constitutes a succinct but forceful reflection on the determined nature of man. The great literary genius of Jack London was able, in a small masterpiece, to offer his conception of the human being as capable of constructing the most exalted works of civilization, but also as being incapable of not always keeping in mind in action and potentially his enormous capacity for destruction and subjugation of the other.