Jack London

V knigu voshli proizvedenija, napisannye znamenitym amerikanskim pisatelem Dzhekom Londonom pod vpechatleniem krugosvetnogo morskogo puteshestvija, kotoroe on predprinjal v 1907-1909 godakh.

"The Red One" is a short story by Jack London. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of The Cosmopolitan, two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by MacMillan, in a collection of London's stories of the same name. 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 perform human sacrifices. Bassett becomes obsessed with the Red One and in the end is sacrificed himself. The story's theme was suggested to London by his friend George Sterling: a message is sent from an alien civilization but is lost in the wilderness. There are parallels to Joseph Conrad's short novel Heart of Darkness. citation needed]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. The story makes an enigmatic reference to helmeted figures, perhaps the Red One's alien crew. Here, London may have anticipated the ancient astronauts of science fiction and pseudoscience.

A Son of the Sun is a 1912 novel by Jack London. It is set in the South Pacific at the beginning of the 20th century and consists of eight separate stories. David Grief is a forty-year-old English adventurer who came to the South seas years ago and became rich. As a businessman he owns offices in Sydney, but he is rarely there. Since his wealth spreads over a lot of islands, Grief has some adventures while going among these islands. London depicts the striking panorama of the South seas with adventurers, scoundrels, swindlers, pirates, and cannibals.

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. I trod interstellar space, exalted by the knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I would find all the cosmic formulae and have made clear to me the ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all absoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated into some unplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt.

"South Sea Tales" is a collection of eight fascinating tales of fantasy and adventure in the South Seas. Based on Jack London's own adventures sailing in the South Pacific, "South Sea Tales" includes the following short sotries: The House of Mapuhi, The Whale Tooth, Mauki, "Yah Yah Yah ", The Heathen, The Terrible Solomons, The Inevitable White Man, and The Seed of McCoy. Readers of all ages will delight in these tales of nautical adventure.