A collection of short stories by author Jack London

Known mainly for his tales of adventure, this work of science fiction by Jack London is set in a post-apocalyptic future. It’s 2072, sixty years after the scarlet plague has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of the few survivors of the pre-plague era left alive in the San Francisco area, and as he realizes his time grows short, he tries to impart the value of knowledge and wisdom to his grandsons. Through his narrative, we learn how the plague spread throughout the world and of the struggles of the handful of survivors it left in its wake. The Scarlet Plague was originally published in London Magazine in 1912.

A dystopian novel about the terrible oppressions of an American oligarchy at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and the struggles of a socialist revolutionary movement. (Introduction by Matt Soar)

The Cruise of the Snark (1913) is a memoir of Jack and Charmian London’s 1907-1909 voyage across the Pacific. His descriptions of “surf-riding”, which he dubbed a “royal sport”, helped introduce it to and popularize it with the mainland. London writes: Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile...

Jack London lived for a time within the grim and grimy world of the East End of London, where half a million people scraped together hardly enough on which to survive. Even if they were able to work, they were paid only enough to allow them a pitiful existence. He grew to know and empathise with these forgotten (or ignored) people as he spoke with them and tasted the workhouse, life on the streets, … and the food, which was cheap, barely nutritious, and foul.He writes about his experiences in...

Martin Eden (1909) is a novel by American author Jack London, about a struggling young writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by The Macmillan Company in September 1909.This book is a favorite among writers, who relate to Martin Eden's speculation that when he mailed off a manuscript, 'there was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the stamps,' returning it automatically with a rejection slip...

This is the story of a voyage of a sailing ship from Baltimore to Seattle, east-to-west around Cape Horn in the winter. It is set in 1913 and the glory days of “wooden ships and iron men” are long over. The Elsinore is a four-masted iron sailing vessel carrying a cargo of 5000 tons of coal. She has a “bughouse” crew of misfits and incompetents. This book was published in 1915 and some actions of some of the characters seem odd to us today. There is romance, but it is strangely platonic. Two important characters disappear with no real explanation...

This book by Jack London was published under the name of "The Jacket" in the UK and "The Star Rover" in the US. A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives...

The novel Valley of the Moon is a story of a working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts, struggling laborers in Oakland at the Turn-of-the-Century, who left the city life behind and searched Central and Northern California for a suitable farmland to own. The book is notable for the scenes in which the proletarian hero enjoys fellowship with the artists' colony in Carmel, and he settles in the Valley of the Moon.

Burning Daylight, Jack London's fictional novel published in 1910, was one of the best selling books of that year and it was his best selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed Burning Daylight was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur "Borax" Smith. (Wikipedia)

"Before Adam is a mixture of sound science and sci-fi speculation. It is based around Darwin's theory of evolution and the idea of racial memory. The main character lives in the current world but has dreams and nightmares that he relives the pre-stone age life of one of his proto-human ancestors. Those who are scientifically inclined may enjoy this novel more than fans of "standard" science fiction such as Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This collection of Jack London's short stories touches on a variety of topics, from his love of boxing, to relationships between criminals, to the trials of life and travel on many frontiers, to an allegory about a king who desired a nose. London is considered a master of the short story, a form much more to his liking and personality than his novels. He was active and quick of mind and the short story suited him well.

5 Exciting short stories by one of Americas best story tellers

Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese shrimp-catchers. It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and crawls back again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows, the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths, into which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to the boiling-pot. This in itself would not be bad, were it not for the small mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes, little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot pass through...

Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs was first published in 1913. It was the third book in an eleven part series known as the Barsoom Chronicles which relate to a sequence of exciting adventure tales set on the fictional planet of Barsoom. In the Barsoom series, Mars, assumed to be older than Earth, is a dying planet. “Barsoom” is the native word for Mars in the Martian language. The stories first appeared in serialized form in various magazines like All-Story, Argosy, Amazing Stories and The Blue Book...

If you're a sci-fi fan, then you've probably heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous Barsoom series of science fiction fantasy novels. Set in the “dying planet” Mars, the ten books in the series portray an Earthman, John Carter and his astral journey to the Red Planet, his marriage with a native princess and his descendants. The Chessmen of Mars is the fifth book in the Barsoom set, written in 1921 and published in serial form in Argosy magazine over the period of a year. Here, John Carter's daughter Tara meets Prince Gahan of the Gathol kingdom, but takes an instant dislike to the young and fashionable man, feeling that he is just a shallow youth...

This is the first book in the Pellucidar series. Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an “iron mole” to burrow 500 miles into the earth’s crust. (adapted from Wikipedia)

Published in 1920, Thuvia, Maid of Mars is the fourth book in the Barsoom series and concentrates on Carthoris, the son of infamous John Carter, and Thuvia, the princess of Ptarth, as they find themselves entangled in a complex web of love and strict traditions of Barsoom. A typical Burroughs piece, the installment contains all the required elements of an effective pulp fiction, including a hero, a damsel in distress, unforeseen complications, and a generous supply of action. Welcoming a new...

The People that Time Forgot is a science fiction novel, the second of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Caspak” trilogy. The first novel ended with the hero writing a manuscript of his adventures and casting it out to sea in his thermos bottle. The second novel begins with the finding of the manuscript and the organization of a rescue expedition.