The novel “Starship: Pirate” by Mike Resnick was published for the first time in 2006. It’s the secoind novel in the “Starship” series and is the sequel of “Starship: Mutiny“.

The crew of the former Republic starship Theodore Roosevelt decided to rebel and, commanded by Captain Wilson Cole, decided to become pirates. Their struggle, however, is against the military leadership, which they judged incompetent, not against innocent people. As a result, they must decide what kind of targets they want to attack.

The life of a pirate is tough because every armed conflict is dangerous and even in the best of cases feeding the crew and the maintenance of the starship have their costs. Wilson Cole and his people need to learn very quickly how to deal with their lives as pirates handling themselves among criminal organizations and unscrupulous fences with being aware that they’re among the most wanted in the Republic.

“Starship: Pirate” continues the adventures of the crew of the spaceship Theodore Roosevelt, or Teddy R. for short, included in future history told by Mike Resnick in most of his stories. The “Starship” series is an old-fashioned space opera, very adventurous or at least in which events are the most important element.

Unlike the new style space opera typical of recent years, the Mike Resnick type is based on simple and linear plots. This isn’t hard science fiction because the various technologies of the future are taken for granted and not explained. The characters are important, or at least the protagonists, but they’re not particularly well-developed though compared to the first novel there’s some depth.

In “Starship: Mutiny”, Wilson Cole looks like a military genius always some steps ahead of colleagues and enemies. Instead, in “Starship: Pirate” he must adapt to a situation that’s totally new for him, therefore, he’s no longer the superhero of the previous novel but a man who has to find the right way to be a pirate.

The whole novel tells Wilson Cole and the crew of the Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to adjust to a life very different from the military one and unknown to them. Everyone knows some pirate adventures but that’s fiction, very different from real life pirates while Mike Resnick tries to be quite realistic or at least as much as a novel of that type can be.

All members of the Teddy R. crew are used to fighting with the awareness that they’re risking their lives because they served in the Republic Navy. The real problem for them is to decide which targets to attack and how to sell the loot in a profitable way.

The starship Theodore Roosevelt is old but it’s a warship and one among the stars of the frontier it has far more firepower than most of the possible enemies. However, Wilson Cole and his crew don’t want to rob people they consider innocent so they decide to hit other pirates who don’t have those scruples. Selling ​​the spoils, however, isn’t so easy.

“Starship: Pirate” tells the various steps taken by Wilson Cole to learn how to be a pirate while maintaining a certain code of ethics and to build a network of contacts that will help him make that business profitable. For this reason, the pace is a bit slower than “Starship: Mutiny” because there are a lot of discussions between Cole and his senior officers and his new contacts but I think these elements make the novel a bit better than the previous one.

Of course, those are never deep philosophical discussions because that’s still fundamentally an adventure novel with plenty of action. Mike Resnick, however, adds something to the basic elements of the plot such as a fence fan of literature that in that future is ancient and uses the name David Copperfield.

Overall, “Starship: Pirate” confirms that the “Starship” series is a space opera good for a few hours of entertainment without thinking too much.