Lucky Starr series

Lucky Starr is the hero of a series of science fiction books by Isaac Asimov, using the pen name "Paul French". Intended for juveniles, the books were written in the middle of the Cold War and the series shows traces of this, both in educational intent and in the nature of the social forces involved. The series is famous for introducing the "Force-Blade," which may have inspired the Lightsaber in the "Star Wars" films.

On 23 March 1951, Asimov met with his then-agent, Frederick Pohl, and Walter I. Bradbury, then the science fiction editor at Doubleday & Co., who had a proposal for him. Pohl and Bradbury wanted Asimov to write a juvenile science fiction novel that would serve as the basis for a television series. Just as "The Lone Ranger" had run on radio since 1933 and on television since 1949, so a science-fiction television series based on it might run for years, earning millions for the publisher, author, and author's agent of the original novel. Fearing that the novel would be adapted into the "uniformly awful" programming he saw flooding the television channels, [cite book| title=In Memory Yet Green| publisher=Doubleday| year=1979| first=Isaac| last=Asimov| id=ISBN 0-380-75432-0| pages=620] he decided to publish it under the pseudonym "Paul French". Asimov began work on the novel, which he modeled closely on the Lone Ranger (the title was "David Starr: Space Ranger") on 10 June. He completed it on 29 July, and it was published by Doubleday in January 1952. Although plans for the television series fell through, Asimov continued to write novels in the series, eventually producing six. With no worries about being associated with an embarrassing televised version, Asimov decided to abandon the pretence that he was not the author (although the books continued to be published under the Paul French pseudonym); he brought the Three Laws of Robotics into "Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter," "which was a dead giveaway to Paul French's identity for even the most casual reader". [cite book| title=In Joy Still Felt| publisher=Doubleday| year=1980| id=ISBN 0-385-15544-1| last= Asimov| first=Isaac| pages=61]

Eventually, Asimov used his own name in later editions. Some cover pages bear his name only, while others credit "Isaac Asimov writing as Paul French".

Publishing history

* "David Starr, Space Ranger" (1952)
* "Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids" (1953)
* "Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus" (1954)
* "Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury" (1956)
* "Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter" (1957)
* "Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn" (1958)

Although the hero's given name was "David" (chosen in honor of his own son), Asimov felt this lacked pizazz, and the later books used his nickname "Lucky".

These novels have a long and varied publishing history. They came out in hardcover with Doubleday in its first edition. Bantam was the latest, in 1993, to bring out the series in 3 volumes, publishing pairs of titles together. In 2001 the Science Fiction Book Club came out with all six novels at the same time in one volume under the title "The Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr."

The British editions of all six novels omitted the prefixes altogether and were simply titled "Space Ranger", "Oceans of Venus", etc. The first book was translated to French in 1954 under the title "Sur la planète rouge" ("On the Red Planet") with the original pseudonym, Paul French. It was published in the famous "Anticipation" science fiction imprint of "Fleuve noir". It was later adapted as a comic book twice, in 1975 and 1992. [http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/luckystarr.htm]

Cover art

Cover artists have illustrated Lucky's actions in an impressively professional manner over and over again but the editors have not been always kind or competent: In the Signet edition of the early 1970s the covers for "Space Ranger" and "Pirates of the Asteroids" were swapped.

In 1984, Del Rey Books reprinted the series with a set of covers by Darrell K. Sweet, shown below.

cience content

Asimov wrote the series near the beginning of the Cold War, when many concerned scientists, engineers and educators in the United States felt that their country, and what they considered to be the "Free World", was falling behind the Communists and the Eastern Bloc in scientific research and engineering developments. In this context, it was important that the youth of the country be given a solid scientific start, and the adventures of David Starr were as a result rather didactic in nature, despite all the action involved.

He carefully introduced astronomical and physical concepts which the scientific knowledge of the time supported. In later editions, he added a preface pointing out that new scientific discoveries have rendered some locations and concepts obsolete: Mercury does not only present one side to the Sun, and Venus is not covered by a global ocean, for example. The books offer more action scenes than Asimov's usual quota, but they are still filled with the scientific and sociological concerns Asimov used in all of his other fiction.

References

*Fawcett 1982 ISBN 0-449-23461-4
*Science fiction Book club (6 in 1) ISBN 0-7394-1941-2
*Bantam (2 in 1) ISBN 0-553-29166-1