David Starr, Space Ranger
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| David Starr, Space Ranger | |
 1984 edition by Del Rey Books. |
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| Author | Isaac Asimov |
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| Cover artist | Darrell K. Sweet |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lucky Starr series |
| Genre(s) | science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | January 1952 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 186 |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids |
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 1951 and first published by Doubleday & Company in January 1952. Since 1971, reprints have included an introduction by Asimov explaining that advancing knowledge of conditions on Mars have rendered some of the novel's descriptions of that world inaccurate. The novel was originally intended to serve as the basis for a television series, a science-fictionalized version of The Lone Ranger, but the series was never made, in part because another series called Rocky Jones, Space Ranger was already in the planning stages.
[edit] Plot summary
David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series' setting and the main characters. The novel is set in 2100, when humanity has spread among the worlds of the Solar System as well as planets orbiting other stars. The most powerful organization in the Solar System is the Council of Science, which deals with mysterious threats to the System's people.
David Starr is an orphaned biophysicist who has just qualified for membership in the Council. In a restaurant in Earth's capital city, Starr sees another diner die. He learns from his guardians (and fellow Council members) Augustus Henree and Hector Conway that there have been some 200 deaths in the last four months. Although there has been no trace of food poison, all the victims died while eating produce raised on Mars. Conway and Henree fear that the deaths are part of a conspiracy to panic the people of Earth. Starr travels undercover to Mars to try to learn what connection the deaths have to the Martian Farming Syndicates.
On Mars, Starr meets John Bigman Jones, a bellicose 5'2" Martian farmboy with typically colorful farmboy boots who has been blacklisted at the Farming Syndicates for seeing something he wasn't supposed to see. When his former boss, Hennes, orders one of his goons to throw Jones out of the Farm Employment Building, Starr intervenes. After facing down Hennes' goon, Griswold, Starr asks Hennes for a job on his farm, and Hennes hires him. At Starr's request, Hennes also rehires Bigman for a month, long enough for him to gain his reference papers. After they enter Hennes' sand car, Hennes has Starr and Bigman stunned.
Starr wakes in the farm owned by Hennes' boss, Mr. Makian. Starr tells Makian his name is Williams, and that he came to Mars on his own to find out the reason his younger sister died of food poisoning, and why the government is trying to cover it up. Makian seems to believe him, and sends the farm's agronomist, Benson, to speak with him. According to Benson, who has been investigating the matter, the poisoned food has come from several Martian farms, but it was all exported through Wingrad City, one of three domed human settlements on Mars. He reports that Makian and several other farm owners have been offered ridiculously small sums of money for their farms, although there is no apparent connection between the offers and the poisonings. Benson tells Starr that he thinks intelligent native Martians living in caverns deep below the planet's surface are poisoning the food in order to drive humanity off Mars.
After a confrontation with Griswold, Makian offers to let Starr join the checkup, a routine survey of the farmlands. Bigman warns him that Hennes is planning to attack him during the checkup, but when Starr decides to take part anyway, Bigman arranges to join him.
As he pulls away from the farm dome and enters Martian gravity, Starr loses control of his sand-car, nearly sending it over a crevasse. Bigman discovers that Starr's sand-car is missing its weight-rods, and Starr realizes that Griswold knew and deliberately failed to warn him. Since his own car is a wreck, he claims Griswold's, and the two fight. After Starr knocks him down, Griswold staggers back up, then stumbles over the edge of the crevasse.
The next day, Benson offers to make Starr his assistant, as a way of keeping him away from Hennes. Starr accepts. A week later, Bigman stops by Benson's lab to tell Starr that he has his papers and is leaving. Starr asks him to stop at the library at Wingrad City and pick up some book-tapes for him. Bigman agrees, then admits that he has recognized him as David Starr of the Council of Science.
When Starr meets Bigman that night outside the dome, he reveals that he believes in Benson's Martians, and that the crevasse Griswold fell into serves as an entrance to their underground caverns. Starr descends into the crevasse and discovers an entrance. He is captured by the Martians, disembodied intelligences who are curious about the Earthmen on the surface, and who know nothing of the poisoned Martian food. They give Starr the name Space Ranger because he travels through space. They also give him an immaterial mask that will act as a personal force-shield and disguise him from other humans. Finally, they return him to the surface.
Starr uses the mask to shield himself from a Martian dust storm as he walks back to the Makian farm. When he gets there, he is questioned about how he survived the storm. He says (truthfully) that he was brought back by a masked man called the Space Ranger who was unaffected by the storm. Benson tells him that while he was gone, all the farm owners received another letter from the poisoner. Unless the farm owners surrender control to him within thirty-six hours, the poisoner will increase the amount of poisoned food a thousandfold.
After Benson leaves, another of Hennes' goons tries to shoot Starr. Starr disarms him, but Hennes arrives with Makian. Hennes tells Makian that Starr is behind the poisoned food, but Starr denies it. Just then, Bigman enters with Dr. Silvers of the Council of Science, who announces that the government has declared a System Emergency and that the Council will be taking control of all the farms on Mars. If the mystery hasn't been solved by the time the deadline expires, all Martian food exports to Earth will stop, and food rationing will be instituted.
Starr arranges with Silver to be publicly removed from the Makian farm, then allowed to secretly return. As the Space Ranger, he confronts Hennes, who blinds himself firing a blaster at him. Starr searches Hennes while he is dazed, then slips away to Dr. Silvers' room. As Starr, he tells Silvers that the Space Ranger is real, that Starr trusts him, and that he is necessary to uncover the conspiracy around the poisoned food. Silvers reluctantly agrees to meet with Makian, Hennes, and Benson at noon the next day.
At the meeting, the Space Ranger appears, and reveals that the mastermind behind the poisoned food is Benson, with Hennes acting as his agent. Benson poisoned the food while pretending to take samples of it, and Hennes kept in contact with Benson's henchmen in the Asteroid Belt. The Space Ranger pretends to dose Hennes with the poison, and he confesses. After the conspiracy is wrapped up, Bigman tells Starr that he knows he is the Space Ranger -- even through the disguise of the Martian mask, he recognized Starr's uniquely colorless black-and-white farmboy boots.
[edit] Themes
As John H. Jenkins has noted, Asimov's novels typically are set either on Earth (Pebble in the Sky, The End of Eternity, The Caves of Steel), or on fictional extrasolar planets (The Currents of Space, The Naked Sun, the Foundation series). The major exceptions to this rule are the Lucky Starr novels, all of which take place among the familiar worlds of the Solar System. David Starr: Space Ranger is the only Asimov novel set on Mars, and the picture of Mars that he draws is accurate, if optimistic, based on what was known about the planet in 1951. The Martian atmosphere is one-fifth as dense as Earth's and is unbreathable by humans due to lack of oxygen. The famous Martian canals are not mentioned as such, though Asimov's Mars does have a network of fissures that might be the source of the presumed canals.
David Starr, Space Ranger was unabashedly based on the Western hero the Lone Ranger, and Asimov goes to great lengths to recreate the fictional American West on Mars. The Martian farmboys are tough, rugged individualists like the fictional cowboys. The Space Ranger himself is a clearly a science fictionalized Lone Ranger, including the mask and the habit of disappearing after defeating the villains. In this first book in the series, Starr exposes and defeats a criminal conspiracy, in the classic tradition of the masked crime-fighter. In subsequent books in the series, Starr moves away from being a masked crime-fighter, and becomes a Cold War secret agent, defending the Solar System from external enemies.
Technically, the villains in David Starr, Space Ranger are a mad scientist and his evil henchman. However, Benson is not a stereotypical megalomaniac given to fits of maniacal laughter. Rather, he is an insecure agronomist who suffers from an inferiority complex. Likewise, Hennes is not a stereotypical browbeaten dimwit, but instead is a thug who pretends to belittle Benson while secretly carrying out his schemes.
In a later novel in the series, Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, the Council of Science is described this way: "In these days, when science really permeated all human society and culture, scientists could no longer restrict themselves to their laboratories. It was for that reason that the Council of Science had been born. Originally it was intended only as an advisory body to help the government on matters of galactic importance, where only trained scientists could have sufficient information to make intelligent decisions. More and more it had become a crime-fighting agency, a counterespionage system. Into its own hands it was drawing more and more of the threads of government."
The most important scientific development of Asimov's own lifetime was the discovery of nuclear energy. Asimov had seen nuclear power escape the control of the scientists who discovered it and become the plaything of politicians who only dimly understood it, and who seemed blind to the danger it represented. His concerns are evident from individual stories such as "Hell-Fire" and "Silly Asses", as well as from the semi-habitable post-nuclear Earth depicted in Pebble in the Sky and The Stars, Like Dust. The Council of Science can be seen as wish-fulfillment on Asimov's part, as scientists in the future tilt the balance of power toward themselves and away from the scientific illiterates who populate the government.
[edit] External links
A review of David Starr, Space Ranger by John H. Jenkins.
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