The Scarlet Plague that biographers and critics have called a "professional decline", from September 1912 to May 1916. In this period, he stopped writing short works and shifted to longer works including "The Abysmal Brute" (1913), "John Barleycorn" (1913), "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" (1914), "The Star Rover" (1915), among others. "The Scarlet Plague" was later reprinted in the February 1949 issue of "Famous Fantastic Mysteries". Jack London was inspired in part by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story "The Masque of the Red Death". Both Poe's story and London's fall into a genre of apocalyptic fiction featuring a universal plague that nearly
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales with a cover by Robh Ruppel. Rick Swan reviewed "Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales" for "Dragon" magazine #216 (April 1995). He declares that "Masque of the Red Death" is cause for celebration, especially for players whose "AD&D" game campaigns have gone stale. Not exactly the Ravenloft setting and not exactly a new game, Connors' little mutant is the most provocative "AD&D" variant since the Spelljammer campaign." He commented: "Balancing blood-soaked imagery with humorous flourishes [...] "Masque" deftly combines the gloom of White Wolf's "" game and the whimsy of R. Talsorian's "Castle Falkenstein" game. Though "Masque" would've