If you'll recall, my last review of a 'Lucky Starr' novel was the third in the series, 'Oceans of Venus', but New English Library published that out of order in the UK as the fourth. So here's the one that they slipped into place ahead of it for no apparent reason, 'The Big Sun of Mercury'. It's the real fourth book even though it was put out as the third by NEL. Bizarrely, there's a point where this is happy to reference each of the books that went before, including 'Oceans of Venus', meaning that, at least in the UK, the third book references the fourth. Ha.

Given such shenanigans, it's almost appropriate that Asimov opens it with another apology. Back in 1956, when this was first published as 'Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury' as by Paul French, the scientific consensus was that Mercury had a dark side. By this reprint in 1970, it was clear that it didn't, thus rendering crucial plot details nonsensical. Rather than rewrite the novel, hardly an easy task given where it goes, Asimov apologised instead and consigned it and other books in the series to become historical anomalies. Good for him.

Scott Mindes is the chief engineer on Project Light, working at the Solar Observatory at Mercury's North Pole, and he shows Lucky and Bigman the sights within an hour of their arrival, including the coronal glimmer. Mostly he wants to get them alone so that he can explain his fears. Accidents are happening but he's been able to account for every single person on base. It's ghosts, he says, goes a little mad and promptly shoots at Lucky, suddenly believing him to be one of them. Small wonder that the Council of Science thinks there's something going on that deserves Lucky's attention.

As we go, we hear various thoughts about what might be happening. Jonathan Urteil, the ass of a roving investigator for Senator Swenson, who opposes the Council of Science, is a conspiracy nut, a man who presages DOGE as a cleansing scalpel wielded against what he perceives as government inefficiency. Dr. Peverale has a more personal approach. It's the Sirians, he says, and he's been all the way to Sirius so he knows. Hanley Cook doesn't agree and trawls out old mining legends. Scott Mindes believes something's out there that can ignore the sun's radiation "that's hot enough to melt lead and boil sulfur".

Oddly, more than one of them is right, but I have to be very careful in what else I say about that to avoid spoilers. Let's just say that this ties into other Asimov works, right down to directly quoting the three laws. If that doesn't ring any bells, then you'll be going into this blind. If it does, as may be more likely, I've kind of given away a little of what's to come but not enough to put the mystery entirely to bed. After all, it's a rare Asimov science fiction novel that involves some philosophy on this particular subject.

Otherwise, he plumbs the old pulp tropes with abandon, to the degree that this almost feels like a 'Doc Savage' novel at points, with a rock octopus and the freezing death. Sure, there's some tasty projection in the new science of sub-etheric optics, but there's also good old-fashioned action in a duel that turns unexpectedly deadly through the sabotage of artificial gravity. Because this is an Asimov novel, moments like that are tempered by long sections of careful dialogue that includes a particularly good diss during dinner, a clever burn that prompts a force knife to be drawn.

While this is an enjoyable enough pulp sci-fi romp, it feels like a step down from its predecessors. I liked 'Pirates of the Asteroids' and 'Oceans of Venus' more, albeit for different reasons. This is the next book in a series and little more than that. It doesn't disappoint but it doesn't shine, ironically given its location where the sun is thirty-six times as bright as on Bigman's home planet of Mars. As Dr. Karl Gardoma points out in the text, "there's no other planetary surface in the Solar System where there is such a concentration of light over so large an area." It really ought to shine.

Let's see if book five, 'The Moons of Jupiter' shines more brightly, even though it's set further out in the solar system than any of the four books before it. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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