reviewer P. Schuyler Miller described it as "fast-moving space opera of a type we all know, with no particular regard for scientific plausibility." 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 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, a background that would also be evident in the later Lucky Starr novels. Just as David Starr, Space Ranger turned the standard mad scientist 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, 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 1953 American