THE STAR ROVER is a science fiction novel by American writer Jack London published in 1915 by Macmillan in the US and in the United Kingdom as The Jacket. It involves astral projection, mysticism and reincarnation. Jack London's descriptions of San Quentin prison were based on interviews with a former convict named Ed Morrell, which London used as a name for a character in the novel. 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.