[1] The novel is a fixup of the stories "Marque and Reprisal", "Arsenal Port" and "Admiralty", originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from February to June 1965.

The Star Fox is set during a period of conflict between humanity and an alien race named the Aleriona, specifically, the conflict between the wily Gunnar Heim and his Alerionian adversary, Cynbe ru Taren, the Aleriona "Intellect Master of the Garden of War" who has been trained in the ways of human thought to the extent that he is alienated from his own race.

Heim begins as a privateer in his illegally outfitted ship the Fox II (named after his old military ship, the Star Fox), waging a one-man war on the Aleriona who ultimately forces Earth into conflict, as he realises that the Alerionan desire to rule all other species is almost impossible to defeat.

Anderson also makes a scathing comment on the anti-Vietnam War movement in his introduction of a pacifist group named "World Militants for Peace".

Unlike Anderson's Mirkheim, which is inhabited by intelligent life, or the barely tolerable Rustum from Orbit Unlimited, New Europe is Earth-like and filled with native life-forms, albeit non-sentient.