The Scarlet Plague

In the year 2073, six decades after a lightning-fast epidemic emptied the world, an old man roams the wild California coast with grandsons who have never seen a city or opened a book. Once an English professor, he struggles to make them understand what was lost when the Scarlet Death carried off nearly everyone in a matter of days. Jack London pictures civilization stripped back to campfires and superstition, its learning already fading into legend, and asks how fast generations of progress can come undone. Written long before such stories were common, it stands as an early landmark of pandemic and post-apocalyptic fiction. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.