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.

[citation needed] David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series' setting and main characters.

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.

Fearing a conspiracy to start a food panic and wreck interplanetary trade, they send Starr undercover to Mars.

Benson also suggests that intelligent native Martians living below the planet's surface are poisoning the food to drive off the human colonists.

They give Starr the name "Space Ranger", and present him with an immaterial mask producing a personal force field that can protect and disguise him.

The next day, at a meeting with Silvers, Makian, Hennes and Benson, Starr again appears as the masked Space Ranger.

Writing in The New York Times, Ellen Lewis Buell reported that Asimov "ingeniously combines mystery with science fiction, saying that "his inventiveness and use of picturesque details" were reminiscent of Robert A.

[1] Groff Conklin praised the novel as effective juvenile fare: "no romance, parlous little science, but endless imagination, exciting ideas and events.