The Red One

{{Short description|1918 short story by Jack London}} {{about||the album by Little Willie Littlefield|The Red One (album){{!}}''The Red One'' (album)|other uses|Red One (disambiguation)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox short story  | name = The Red One | image = TheRedOne.jpg | caption = First collection edition | title_orig = | translator = | author = [[Jack London]] | country = United States | language = English | series = | genre = Science fiction | published_in = | publication_type = Magazine | publisher = ''[[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|The Cosmopolitan]]'' | media_type = | pub_date = 1918 | english_pub_date = | preceded_by = | followed_by = | preceded_by_italics = | followed_by_italics = }} "'''The Red One'''" is a short story by [[Jack London]]. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of ''[[Cosmopolitan (magazine)|The Cosmopolitan]]'',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jacklondons.net/Fiction_of_jack_london/page31.html|website=Jacklondons.net|title=Fiction of Jack London|page=31|accessdate=January 6, 2013|url-status=usurped|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110612215656/http://www.jacklondons.net/Fiction_of_jack_london/page31.html|archivedate=June 12, 2011}}</ref> two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by [[Macmillan Publishers (United States)|MacMillan]], in a collection of London's stories of the same name.<ref name="SuvinDouglas" />

==Overview== The story is told from the perspective of a scientist called Bassett, who is on an expedition in the jungle of [[Guadalcanal]] to collect butterflies. The "Red One" of the title refers to a giant red sphere, of apparently extraterrestrial origin, that the [[headhunting]] natives worship as their god and to which they make [[human sacrifice]]s. Bassett becomes obsessed with the Red One, and in the end is sacrificed himself.<ref>{{cite book|author=Jeanne Campbell Reesman|title=Jack London's Racial Lives: A Critical Biography|publisher=University of Georgia Press |date= 2009| isbn=978-0820327891}}</ref>

The story's theme was suggested to London by his friend [[George Sterling]], to whom he wrote in 1916: {{Blockquote|text=Do you remember another wonderful story you told me a number of years ago—of the meteoric message from Mars or some other world in space, that fell amongst isolated savages, that was recognized for what it was by the lost explorer, who died or was killed before he could gain access to the treasure in the heart of the apparent meteor?<ref>{{cite book|author=Earle Labor|title=Jack London: An American Life|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |date=2013| page=366}}</ref>}}

There are parallels to [[Joseph Conrad]]'s short novel ''[[Heart of Darkness]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Clareson |first=Thomas |date=1972 |title=A Spectrum of Worlds |publisher= Doubleday |isbn=0385016573}}</ref> Critics have noted the possible influence of [[Carl Jung]] on the story, as London became aware of Jung's ideas at around the time of writing "The Red One" in 1916. <ref>{{cite news|title=The Myth of Hope in Jack London's 'The Red One'|author= Leonard Cassuto and Jeanne Campbell Reesman| work=Rereading Jack London|publisher= Stanford University Press|date= 1998}}</ref>

The story makes an enigmatic reference to helmeted figures, perhaps the Red One's alien crew. Here, London may have anticipated the [[ancient astronaut]]s of [[science fiction]] and [[pseudoscience]].<ref>{{cite news|author=David A. Moreland|title=The Quest that Failed: Jack London's Last Tales of the South Seas|work= Pacific Studies|date= 1984 |url=https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/PacificStudies/article/download/9347/8996}}</ref> The science fiction writer [[Arthur C. Clarke]] mentioned "The Red One" in a note to his 1983 short story collection ''[[The Sentinel (collection)|The Sentinel]]'': {{Blockquote|text=Some time after "[[The Sentinel (short story)|The Sentinel]]" was published, I was asked if I had ever read Jack London’s "The Red One" (1918). As I’d never even heard of it, I hastened to do so, and was deeply impressed by his thirty-year-earlier tale of the "Star-Born," an enormous sphere lying for ages in the jungles of Guadalcanal. I wonder if this is the first treatment of a theme which has suddenly become topical, now that the focus of the [[Search for extraterrestrial intelligence|SETI]] debate has changed from “Where’s Everyone?” to the even more puzzling "Where Are Their Artifacts?"<ref>{{cite book|author=Arthur C. Clarke|title=The Sentinel|publisher=Berkley Books |date=1983}}</ref>}}

The U.S. copyright on "The Red One" has expired, and the story is available on [[Project Gutenberg]].<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/788|via=Project Gutenberg|title=The Red One|author=London, Jack|date=1918}}</ref>

==See also== * [[Flatland]], a novel by [[Edwin Abbott Abbott]] * [[Les Xipéhuz]], a novel by [[J.-H. Rosny]]

==References== <references>

<ref name="SuvinDouglas">{{cite web | last1 = Suvin | first1 = Darko | last2 = Douglas | first2 = David | title = Jack London and His Science Fiction: An Annotated Chronological Select Bibliography | publisher = Science Fiction Studies | work = Depauw.edu | url = http://www.depauw.edu/SFs/backissues/9/suvin9bib.htm | accessdate = 2011-08-29 | archive-date = 2011-06-10 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110610221915/http://www.depauw.edu/SFs/backissues/9/suvin9bib.htm | url-status = dead }}</ref>

</references>

==External links== {{Wikisource|The Red One/The Red One|The Red One}} {{Gutenberg|no=788|name=The Red One}} * {{ISFDB title|68757}} {{Short stories by Jack London}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Red One, The}} [[Category:1918 short stories]] [[Category:Short stories by Jack London]] [[Category:Science fiction short stories]] [[Category:Works originally published in Cosmopolitan (magazine)]] [[Category:1918 short story collections]] [[Category:Solomon Islands in fiction]] [[Category:Guadalcanal]] [[Category:Fiction about ancient astronauts]]