Space Ranger

David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series’ setting and the 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 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 suppresses threats to the System’s people. Protagonist David Starr is an orphaned biophysicist qualified for membership in the Council of Science, who learns from his guardians Augustus Henree and Hector Conway of some 200 deaths in the last four months, whose victims died while eating produce raised on Mars. Conway and Henree fear that the deaths are part of a conspiracy to frighten the people of Earth; wherefore Starr travels undercover to Mars to discover the deaths’ connection to the Martian Farming Syndicates.