Welcome to the sixth and final book in Isaac Asimov's 'Lucky Starr' series! Well, it's only the sixth if you're reading the New English Library paperback reprints from the early seventies like I am right now. Otherwise, it's only the fifth in the series, because NEL got themselves all mixed up bringing these titles back into print. They were originally published in the fifties with longer titles, this one being 'Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter', and under the pseudonym of Paul French.

There's no apology from Asimov to kick this one off, which means he was presumably still happy in 1975 with the science that he'd trusted back in 1957. Then again, we're on the moons of Jupiter this time out and he doesn't posit anything outrageous. We spend time on Adrastea, or Jupiter Nine, its outermost moon and, in this future, a shipyard. We travel in an Agrav ship to Jupiter One, or Io. And Asimov acknowledges that there are over a hundred satellites of the gas giant. It seems like he may be right there, though I believe we've only counted ninety-seven thus far.

Frankly, the only obvious mistake isn't a science mistake but a history mistake and I think we can cut Asimov some slack for not accurately predicting in 1957 what the name of the first man on the moon would be. He says that Janofski and Sterling were the first, just as Ching was the equivalent on Mars and Labell and Smith on Venus. History hasn't proved him wrong there yet but I wonder if he ever apologised to Neil Armstrong. I'm sure they had to have met at some point.

Lucky is on Adrastea to try to figure out how the Sirians are stealing information about the Agrav project, given that every single man on the base has been cleared. In fact, Commander Donahue, who's in charge, is rather upset that a member of the Council of Science has been sent, given that the men are fed up of being constantly under a cloud of suspicion. That doesn't stop Lucky and he deals with the inevitably dangerous hazing capably, albeit with the assistance of Bigman, as it's the little Martian who notices that Red Summers, who set up the reception party to knock Lucky off, is cheating and neatly levels the playing field.

If you're wondering what Agrav is and you haven't already guessed that it's short for anti-gravity, I'll put you out of your misery. That's exactly what it is and it's being developed and tested here in the base on Adrastea. No wonder the Sirians want the details! Initially, we see it in action as a way to fall easily between corridors without a need for lifts or staircases. Just fall and adjust the agrav controls on your belt to the appropriate degree. Do it often enough and you won't even need to think about doing it. It'll become muscle memory.

Eventually, we see it in action on a ship, which powers them from Adrastea to Io and we can add a couple of new names to the list of first men to land on a planetary body. It's less believable here, not because it's any further beyond our current level than the corridor doodads but because this advanced technology is powered by punch machines and coded tapes. To my mind, it's one thing to sail old-fashioned ships across interstellar space in deliberately anachronistic fashion or design a fully functioning internet out of steam powered technology, all to play in an old-fashioned genre, and another to completely fail to predict the rise of digital technology in 1957. It isn't bad science, so Asimov doesn't need to apologise, but it's arguably a little shortsighted for a man who kept his eyes on technological advances.

There are lots of references back to earlier books, all four of them, as, shock horror, there was no way for Asimov to reference NEL's supposed book five, the one he hadn't actually written yet. The four are all checked off by page sixteen of this edition and the text only starts on page seven, so a ten-page span. The key reference is to the Venusian V-frogs because Lucky and Bigman bring one along with them to use as a tool to identify telepathic activity. When the innocent V-frog is killed mysteriously, it just proves that they're on the right track. Does the V-frog die in this one? Yes, it does. Where's the website for that?

There are also connections to Asimov's broader output of science fiction, not to any specific book but through Asimov's not unusual focus on robots and the reliance of the reveal on his own three laws of robotics. Given the impossible but true setup, in which the Sirians are getting information without anyone apparently sending it out, Lucky figures that the method has to be by robot and his job becomes identifying where that robot is, potentially who that robot is. I was able to figure it out ahead of the reveal but not by much at all. And, sure, I've read this before but forty years ago and I have no memories of the series that are that detailed.

In fact, the series continues to surprise me because, for all the obsolete science, it's much better written than, say, Captain W. E. Johns's 'Interplanetary Adventures', as fun as some of them were. As juvenile science fiction, to use the term of the day, they can't hold a candle to Heinlein's early novels for younger audiences, but they stand up as good old-fashioned pulp adventure. The more Asimov developed the series, the more he ditched the stupid superhero elements that tied to the original mindset of 'The Lone Ranger' in outer space and focused on riproaring adventure, clever mystery and actual science fiction. They're still worth reading.

And I'll wrap up the series next month with the real sixth and final book, which takes Lucky to the 'Rings of Saturn'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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