The Scarlet Plague (1912) is set in London's hometown of San Francisco, California.ack 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.Jack London, world-famous adventurer and author of The Call of the Wild, wrote several key works of Radium-Age science fiction (1904-33), including The Iron Heel (1908) and The Star Rover (1914).