Trying to remember the title of a book I read many years ago

[bruce3371]

I remember reading a Sci-Fi novel whilst at middle school. It was the book that got me into Sci-fi in the first place (apart from Star Wars of course!). Problem is, I just can't for the life of me remember what it was called, or who wrote it!

It was the story of a boy living in the future, whos father was missing (or dead?). The boy tries to find out what happened to his father. Apart from that very vague plot summary, I remember that there was asteroid mining operations in it, and that a big part of the plot centered around this. I'm pretty sure the villains of the story were trying to (illegally?) gain the asteroid resources for themselves, and that this somehow involved the boy's father, and was the reason he went missing (died?).

For some reason, one of my most vivid memories from the book is where the boy comes across a robotic squirrel climbing a tree!

Sorry I can't give any more details, but I was hoping it would ring some bells with someone...

[Avatar]

Not me I'm afraid, but we're good at this game. Somebody will figure it out.

--A

[Lefdmae Deemalr Effaeldm]

I can't remember such a book, perhaps you may find it here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_in_fiction I tried to look through the list, but squirrels are likely to not make it to the short summaries, and you're more likely to recognize it, if it's there to start with.

[bruce3371]

Thanks for the link. I've looked through it, and the closest one I can see is 'Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids' by Paul French (Isaac Azimov pseudonim). I'm not 100% sure it's the right one. I'll keep on looking.

The squirrel I'm pretty sure was in the book because Earth's resources had run out and real animals were either non-exitant or extremely rare.

[wayfriend]

I did a google search on robot squirrels. There are a lot more robot squirrels out there than you might imagine. Very entertaining reading. But it did little to solve your mystery.

It does sound like an Asimov story. He wrote some sci-fi whodunnits, and the description seems like his kind of milieu.

[bruce3371]

Just done some more digging around on t'interwebnet, and I'm now convinced I've found it. It is indeed Azimov's 'Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids'. I looked on the Goodreads site, and saw a picture of the book's front cover, and recognised it straight away!

Thanks for your help guys, now I'm going to look on Amazon to see of I can get hold of copies of the whole Lucky Starr series, for the nostalgia!!