Discovery and Exploration Reading List - JSCC Pioneer Con 2024

Buck is a St. Bernard/Scotch Shepherd mix dog living in the sun-kissed valley of Santa Clara, California. But, when he is stolen and transported up to frozen lands of the Yukon, he discovers an existence almost beyond his comprehension. However, while most southern dogs that are suddenly dropped into this harsh and unforgiving environment, Buck not only survives, he thrives. It seems that ancient memories are speaking to Buck, drawing him towards the call of the wild... This classic tale has

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is a witty and insightful satirical novel recounts the history of Lemuel Gulliver, "First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships". In his travels Gulliver visits the Land of Lilliput, where he towers over the local inhabitants, the land of Brobdingnag where he is much smaller than the citizens, the floating island of Laputa, infested with fanatical scientists who in their obsession with reason behave with no sense at all and finally to the land of the brutish Yahoos who look to all intents and purposes like humans and are derided by the intelligent horse people. John Gay said in a 1726 letter to Swift that "it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery"

It is the late nineteenth century, and colonial powers have claimed various parts of the African continent. Marlow, a riverboat captain for a Belgian ivory trading firm, is traveling up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, the manager of one of the company's trading stations. Marlow witnesses the brutal colonization practices and treatment of the native inhabitants. Equally fascinated and puzzled by Kurtz, who is both feared and treated like a god by the natives, Marlow tries to understand this mad man. Exploring the roots of evil amidst the corrupt influence of imperialism, this unabridged version of the horror novella by Polish author Joseph Conrad was first published serially in England in 1899.

Jules Verne's classic science fiction story Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea tells the great tale of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus. In 1866 a strange and unknown sea monster is sighted by ships and an ocean liner is attacked. An expedition prepares in New York, to find and destroy the menacing creature. The 20,000 of the title refers to an overall distance traveled under the sea, rather than an impossible measure of descent.

Widely regarded as one of the finest works of literature in the Western canon, Homer's Odyssey is a masterpiece of classical epic poetry. The tale follows the travels of the Greek hero Odysseus as he strives to return to his homeland after waging battle in the Trojan War. Long presumed dead after a 20-year absence, Odysseus finally returns to his native Ithaca and is forced to fight to resume his long-lost life and save his family from ruin.

A biography of one of the most famous and influential mariners of history: Captain James Cook FRS RN.

Brimming with romance and adventure, Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote is considered by many to be the greatest work in the Spanish literary canon. Both humane and humorous, the two volume oeuvre centres on the adventures of the self-styled knight errant Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Quixote's credulous and chubby squire. Together the unlikely pair of heroes bumble their way from one bizarre adventure to another fueled in their quests by Quixote's histrionic world view and Sancho's, who in conjunction with Quixote provides the spark for endlessly bizarre discussions in which Quixote's heightened, insane conception of the world is brought crashing to earth by Sancho's common sense.