''Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids'' is the second novel in the ''Lucky Starr'' series, six juvenile

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novels by

Isaac Asimov yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...

that originally appeared under the pseudonym Paul French. The novel was first published by

Doubleday & Company Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

in November 1953.

Plot summary

A year has passed since the events in ''

David Starr, Space Ranger ''David Starr, Space Ranger'' is the first novel in the ''Lucky Starr'' series, six juvenile science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov that originally appeared under the pseudonym Paul French. The novel was written between 10 June and 29 July 19 ...

''. In that time the spaceship TSS ''Waltham Zachary'' has been taken and gutted by pirates based in the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

. Because David "Lucky" Starr harbors a personal dislike of the pirates for their murder of his parents, he has devised a plan whereby the unmanned survey ship ''Atlas'', as soon as the pirates capture it and bring it to their hidden base, will explode. Unknown to anyone, Starr has leaked the plan to the pirates and sneaked aboard the ship, believing an infiltration will be a more efficient way to bring down the pirates. When captured, Starr tells the pirate leader, Captain Anton, that his name is Williams (his alias from ''

''), and offers to join the pirates; whereupon Anton has Starr fight a

duel A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people, with matched weapons, in accordance with agreed-upon Code duello, rules. During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly single combats fought with swords (the r ...

in open space to prove himself worthy. Starr wins the duel, but remains a prisoner aboard ''Atlas'' while it is brought to an anonymous asteroid. The asteroid is home to a hermit named Joseph Patrick Hansen, and the pirates leave Starr in Hansen's care. Hansen tells Starr that he purchased the asteroid as a vacation site, and gradually made it more comfortable over the years, but now depends on the pirates for supplies, and later recognizes the pretended "Williams" as Lawrence Starr's son. Starr admits his true identity, and Hansen convinces him to pilot them to

Ceres Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...

. On Ceres, Starr plans to send his friend Bigman to infiltrate the pirates, but realizes that Hansen's asteroid is not where it should be. Starr and Bigman take their own spaceship ''Shooting Starr'' to search for it and eventually land on its surface, where Starr is captured by Dingo, the pirate he beat in the duel. Dingo takes him inside the asteroid, revealing a hyperatomic engine used to move it. A fight with Dingo ends when Starr is struck with a neuronic whip and loses consciousness. Starr wakes to find himself in a spacesuit on the surface of the asteroid; whereupon Dingo straps him to a catapult and flings him into

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

. He uses his oxygen reserve to reverse his course and return to the asteroid, where he and Bigman defeat some of the pirates. As they leave the pirates' asteroid, they learn that a pirate fleet is attacking Ceres. Returning to Ceres, Starr realizes that the pirates' real object was to capture Hansen, which they have accomplished, and learns that Captain Anton's ship is taking Hansen to a secret Sirian base on Ganymede, whence the Sirians plan to attack Earth while Earth's fleet is occupied fighting the pirates in the Asteroid Belt. Although Anton has a 12-hour head start, Starr passes him to Ganymede by skimming the ''Shooting Starr'' past the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, wearing the Martian "Space Ranger" mask to ward off the heat and radiation. When Anton makes for Ganymede, Starr threatens to ram his ship, and accelerates toward it, all the while talking to Anton. The ships are ten miles apart when Hansen kills Anton and orders Anton's crew to surrender to Starr. When the Terran fleet arrives to take custody of the pirate ship, Starr convinces the commanding admiral to concentrate on the asteroid pirates and leave the Sirian base on Ganymede alone, revealing that Hansen is the leader of the asteroid pirates. It is then revealed that while Starr was intercepting Anton's ship, the Council of Science, on Starr's orders, captured the base and achieved the wherewithal to terminate the asteroid piracy. Hansen is coerced to have the Sirians leave Ganymede, and is sent to incarceration on Mercury. Afterwards, Starr reveals that the matter between him and Hansen was not just about the latter being the pirate mastermind, but a far more personal one. Hansen claimed to have met David's father, but didn't recognize his two close friends (despite the three being all but inseparable), and claimed that David resembles his father the most when he is angry, despite Lawrence hardly ever being in that state. From that, David states that within an hour after meeting Hansen, he knew he was facing not his father's acquaintance, but his parents' murderer.

Reception

Writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', Sidney Lohman praised ''Pirates'' as "grand science fiction for all ages." Reviewer

Groff Conklin Edward Groff Conklin (September 6, 1904 – July 19, 1968) was an American science fiction anthologist. He edited 40 anthologies of science fiction, one of mystery stories (co-edited with physician Noah Fabricant), wrote books on home improvemen ...

described the novel as "almost entirely conceived in the straight gee-whiz adventure technique that is the classical pattern for teenage adventure stories", and not as "cruel and bloody" as the first ''Lucky Starr'' book, so "Excellent for the Junior set". ''Astounding'' reviewer

P. Schuyler Miller Peter Schuyler Miller (February 21, 1912 – October 13, 1974) was an American science fiction writer and critic. Life Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley, which led to a lifelong interest in the Iroquois Indians. He pursued this as ...

described it as "fast-moving space opera of a type we all know, with no particular regard for scientific plausibility.""The Reference Library", ''

Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...

'', November 1954, p.143

Themes

''Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids'' is a transitional novel in the Lucky Starr series. It introduces the Sirians as the main threat to Earth, and marks Starr's transformation from his masked crime-fighter role of the first novel to the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

secret agent role he will play in the rest of the series. The novel also contains the first hints of an overpopulated Earth facing the hostility of the younger worlds of the Galaxy. From Chapter 6: :The food was good, but strange. It was yeast-base material, the kind only the Terrestrial Empire produced. Nowhere else in the Galaxy was the pressure of population so great, the billions of people so numerous, that yeast culture had been developed. This was the seed of the background Asimov would create for his next novel, ''

The Caves of Steel ''The Caves of Steel'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is a detective story and illustrates an idea Asimov advocated, that science fiction can be applied to any literary genre, rather than just being a limited ge ...

'', a background that would also be evident in the later Lucky Starr novels. Just as ''David Starr, Space Ranger'' turned the standard

mad scientist The mad scientist (also mad doctor or mad professor) is a stock character of a scientist who is perceived as " mad, bad and dangerous to know" or "insane" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabashedly amb ...

plot on its head by making the villain an unhappy neurotic rather than a power-mad megalomaniac, so ''Pirates of the Asteroids'' turns the standard revenge drama plot on its head. Instead of spending the novel tracking down the man who killed his parents, Starr spends much of his time in the man's company, fully aware of his identity but pretending ignorance in order to reach his larger goal of ending the pirate menace. Instead of a climactic showdown that ends in Hansen's violent death, Starr patiently explains to him that his plan to help the Sirians conquer Earth has been thwarted, and persuades him to talk the Sirians into leaving the Solar System. In the novel, the pirates apparently go to great lengths in an attempt to recapture a minor character that lived near them, presumably because he knows something critical to them, but the ending reveals he was the pirates' leader all along. In ''

Foundation and Empire ''Foundation and Empire'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov originally published by Gnome Press in 1952. It is the second book in the ''Foundation'' Series, and the fourth in the in-universe chronology. It takes place in ...

'', the main characters are fleeing from the Mule with a person who is claimed to be his court jester, and who seems to be of critical importance to the Mule, judging from the efforts to recapture him. The ending likewise reveals the jester to have been the Mule all along.

References

External links

* * {{Isaac Asimov novels 1953 American novels American science fiction novels Doubleday (publisher) books Fiction set on Ceres (dwarf planet) Fiction set on Ganymede (moon) Fiction about main-belt asteroids Science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov Fiction set around Sirius Works published under a pseudonym