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. Plot summary David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series' setting and main characters. The novel is set around A.D. 7,000 (five thousand years after the first nuclear bomb, as stated at the beginning), when humanity has founded colonies on the inner planets of the Solar System, as well as spreading to other planetary systems with separate and sometimes hostile governments. The most powerful organization in the Solar System is the Council of Science, which uses scientific expertise and intrepid field agents to counter political and military threats to Earth's government. Protagonist David Starr is a young biophysicist orphaned as an infant and raised by his guardians Augustus Henree and Hector Conway, high-ranking Council members who send David on his missions for the Council. They tell him of some 200 recent victims fatally poisoned by produce imported from Mars. Fearing a conspiracy to start a food panic and wreck interplanetary trade, they send Starr undercover to Mars. There Starr meets John "Bigman" Jones, a short but pugnacious Martian farmboy blacklisted by the Martian Farming Syndicates after witnessing underhanded dealings. When his former boss Hennes orders Bigman out of the Farm Employment Building, Starr stands up for him and gains positions for both himself and Bigman. The humiliated Hennes subsequently has Starr and Bigman knocked out and brought to the farm owned by Hennes' boss, Mr. Makian, who apologizes and appears friendly. Starr says his name is Williams and he came from Earth to investigate his sister's death from food poisoning. Makian sends him to the farm's agronomist Benson, who explains that the poisoned food came from several Martian farms and was exported through the domed Wingrad City. Meanwhile Makian and