History Main / SpacePirates

* ''Literature/TheStarDiaries'': {{Parodied|Trope}} in "The Twenty-eighth Voyage", when Ijon Tichy tells of his grandfather Euzebius, who chose a career in interplanetary piracy. Euzebius would lure rockets off course by "scatter[ing] tiny flashlights along the Milky Way", then fall upon the duped and plunder them. Because of his habit of simply chucking dead bodies into space, over time there formed a cloud of corpses forever orbiting his black rocket. Ijon Tichy also [[DeconstructedTrope mentions that interplanetary piracy in generally unprofitable]] and therefore practically inexistent; indeed Euzebius (says Ijon Tichy) had no material motives in the first place, but was [[JustifiedTrope a Romantic idealist who wished "to bring back the venerable Earth tradition of piracy on the high seas"]]. Since Euzebius would frequently wait for years for rockets to prey upon, and therefore suffer terribly from boredom, he would after a completed robbery give back his victims all their belongings and let them travel on, then overtake them again to board and plunder them another time ("this would happen six, even ten times in a row").

AsYouKnow, SpaceIsAnOcean, so it's only logical that it must have {{pirate}}s as well.

It's not as anachronistic as it might seem. After all, RuthlessModernPirates[[note]]Now referred to by many governments as maritime terrorists[[/note]] have made a RealLife comeback in Somalia and South East Asia, and it's a lucrative enough "business" that it's taken a multinational military response to fight back. Surely an established society in outer space with significant trade and commerce would suffer similar problems!

* ''Film/AlienResurrection'' has the crew of the ''Betty'', which is not unlike another Creator/JossWhedon [[Series/{{Firefly}} creation]]. The ''Betty'' crew are a band of criminals and mercenaries who were hired by amoral [[ArmiesAreEvil military]] [[MadScientist scientists]] to kidnap unconscious space travellers and deliver them to a secret science lab, where they become victims to experiments with the eponymous[[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong Aliens]].

* ''Literature/HonorHarrington''. Among the nastiest things they do is [[ThrownOutTheAirlock throw people into space as a means of execution]], which is widely regarded as an unforgivable atrocity. Space piracy is the major raison d'etre for military power in times of peace, and plays heavily in the various works of fiction. It typically serves as a place for new characters to "start off small" in deadly, but relatively low-stakes, combat (prior to the war with Haven, anti-piracy operations in Silesia were the primary source of combat training for RMN personnel). They also tend to come up as disposable pawns in Mesa's latest EvilPlan. Space pirates are ''never'' portrayed the least bit sympathetically. Piracy is universally a capital crime, and for excellent reasons.
** It may be worth noting that many of the pirates operate under an agreement with a local polity. In Silesia, it is not uncommon to turn over a batch of recently captured pirates to the local government, and then six months later the same pirates have a new ship and are back in action. The local government is basically taking a bribe to ignore the piracy, or has funded the pirates to plunder shipping from richer nations (I.E. Manticorian shipping would carry better goods that the government can buy through normal means) and will turn a blind eye to rape and murder to gain such benefits. However, the pirates that turned over also get put on Manticore's list. If they get caught a second time...
** Some privateers (which, historically, were separated from pirates by rather thin margins), however, get better treatment. Like Admiral (Royal Naval Reserve) Thomas Bachfisch, one of Honor's mentors. After he was beached by ''first'' Janacek admiralty, he retired from active duty, and managed to obtain the Letter of Marque, starting, effectively, a privateer shipping line. Equipped with fast, armed, merchantmen (actually, surplus Andermani Navy transports) it operated in [[WretchedHive Silesia]], where their improved speed and protection allowed him to charge a premium and engage in a little pirate hunting of his own. Not mentioning his side work as a Manticoran intelligence resident (Admiral Givens of the RMN intelligence service being the source of the pressure to give him a Letter of Marque) in Silesia.

…well, maybe. The major problem with space pirates preying on space commerce is that space is '''''vast'''''. The challenge of catching commercial shipping in open space is orders of magnitudes more difficult than catching them on the open seas. On the other hand, ''detecting'' commercial shipping in open space is orders of magnitude easier, just because it is so empty and clear. Sometimes, this is cleverly worked around and justified. [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale Most of the time, however, it isn't.]] Particularly since doing so would require working in a plausible means for the pirates to ''escape'' undetected after plundering their target.

It is possible for a mix of the two types to occur, with an otherwise relatively realistic space pirate who's familiar with the history of piracy on Earth adopting some of those pirate cliches [[ItAmusedMe just for fun]]. But this is much less common; the "cliche" style of space pirates usually have no attempt at a "realistic" justification at all.

*** While Ultranauts are common characters throghout various stories of the series, these vast variations are explored a bit more in-depth in the short story ''Weather''. Captain Voulage and the crew of the ''Cockatrice'' are some of the few explicitly piratical Ultras, even kidnapping a Conjoiner lady and intimidating her to reveal technological secrets of lighthugger drives (as the Conjoiner faction actually invented and manufactured these starships, despite most of them gradually falling into Ultra hands). The crew of another lighthugger from the story, the ''Petronel'', led by captain Van Ness, are the viewpoint crew of the story. They are the polar opposite in attitude, ferrying passengers in [[HumanPopsicle reefersleep]] and just trying to do their jobs, all the while desperately fighting off the ''Cockatrice'''s attacks (at near-light speeds). Once the ''Cockatrice'' is destroyed in a lucky freak accident, the shipmaster of the ''Petronel'' even pleads with his boss to retrieve any survivors. They find only one, the kidnapped Conjoiner lady. The rest of the story, while not as action-focused, is an interesting character piece on the crew, the nature of the Ultranauts, and the differences and similarities between the societies of the two factions, Ultranauts and Conjoiners.

** ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Recurring throughout the trilogy. In ''The Paradise Snare'', some of them are hired by Desilijic to attack Besadii spice shipments, with Han barely escaping one of the raids. In ''The Hutt Gambit'', a pirate fleet commanded by Drea Renthal is hired by the Hutts to defend Nal Hutta from Imperial attack, siding with the smugglers fighting them near Nar Shaddaa. In ''Rebel Dawn'', the same fleet attacks a star liner carrying Boba Fett and his captives, Lando and Bria: [[spoiler:because of her past relationship with Lando, she pressures Fett into releasing them]]. Also most smugglers are basically pirates themselves according to Lando.

* In ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'', there are the recurring villains, space pirates Rat and Jolly U. In the ''Literature/TheVoyageOfAlice'', it's said they and their (probably robotic) crew are the last remaining pirates in space, however, the following books introduced more of these and even an entire region of the galaxy called the Grey Nebula and inhabited by space outlaws.

* August 2019 saw the first report of an actual crime in space, albeit not a violent one. Astronaut Anne [=McClain=] was accused by her wife Summer Worden of illegally accessing the latter's financial information using a computer on board the International Space Station. Incidentally, this also makes [=McClain=] the first openly homosexual astronaut.

** ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Recurring throughout the trilogy. In ''The Paradise Snare'', some of them are hired by Desilijic to attack Besadii spice shipments, with Han barely escaping one of the raids. In ''The Hutt Gambit'', a pirate fleet commanded by Drea Renthal is hired by the Hutts to defend Nal Hutta from Imperial attack, siding with the fighting them near Nar Shaddaa. In ''Rebel Dawn'', the same fleet attacks a star liner carrying Boba Fett and his captives, Lando and Bria: [[spoiler:because of her past relationship with Lando, she pressures Fett into releasing them]]. Also most smugglers are basically pirates themselves according to Lando.

** In Graham [=McNeill=]'s Literature/{{Ultramarines}} novel ''Nightbringer'', a Dark Eldar pirate is raiding the vessel carrying the Space Marines.

*** The Deneth are former Centauri subjects who managed to defeat the local garrison and prevent the Centauri from reconquering them by blowing up the jumpgate connecting the core of Centauri space to their world... But as destroying jump gates is considered a serious crime by interstellar war they found themselves without any trading partner, forcing them to turn to piracy.

** Other Raider groups are shown as a cross between minor nuisances and [[ButtMonkey comical victims of enemies much stronger than them]], like the one who attacked a lightly-defended shipment of [[{{Unobtainium}} Quantium-40]] that was actually a bait from the [[TheAlliance Army of Light]], or the Drazi-supported group that tormented a planet for years and was visited by the whole White Star Fleet.

* In ''Literature/TheMartian'', marooned astronaut Mark Watney comes to a realization that his best option for rescue technically involves this, due to [[spoiler: a burned-out radio and]] an intersection between international treaties, maritime law, and the RuleOfCool. By international treaties, Mars is international territory governed by maritime law; by maritime law, commandeering a vessel in international waters is piracy; ergo: "That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!"

* The card game ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombiesHeroes'' has an expansion pack called "Galactic Gardens," which introduced several space-themed pirates zombies to the game, including a pirate zombie ''actually called'' "Space Pirate" (he has a [[SwissArmyWeapon Swiss army knife]] for a hand and a [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys robotic monkey]]).

* King Hippo relates a story to ''Webcomic/CaptainSNES'' about the time he raided the space pirates who built Mother Brain... the ''WesternAnimation/CaptainNTheGameMaster'' version. They came complete with Space Booty and Space-Yarrs.

** The Banished started out as this in their early years.

** ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo'': [[BigBad Divatox]] and her crew are a band of space pirates who roam the universe in a submarine-shaped ship (making them a cross between this trope and SubmarinePirates), and her main motive for being evil is greed. Their [[Series/GekisouSentaiCarranger Carranger]] counterparts, the Bowzock, had nothing to do with piracy however.

** The main villain of ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo'' is the space pirate queen Divatox.

** The [[SixthRanger Twokaizer]] and his family from ''Series/KikaiSentaiZenkaiger'' are an inter-dimensional variant. Originally coming from an AlternateReality [[PlanetOfHats world of pirates]], they established themselves as the first World Plunderers[[note]]"Kai-zoku/界賊", pirate("海賊/sea plunderer") but written with the kanji for "world" instead[[/note]] after obtaining inter-dimensional travel technology, and basing their home in a crocodile-themed GiantMecha spaceship. It's also worth noting that due to having encountered the Gokaigers themselves in one of their inter-dimensional travels, the family ''[[{{pun}} pirated]] their suit design to make the Twokaizer suit'' out of admiration.

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' has them appear as a VillainOfTheWeek in several episodes, but one reoccurring villain was the Hierarchy, the most bureaucratic bunch of space pirates you'll ever meet. Unfortunately they had superior technology to Voyager, so the conflict always involved our heroes having to oursmart them.

** Bender briefly goes Space Pirate in the film ''[[Recap/FuturamaM2TheBeastWithABillionBacks The Beast With a Billion Backs]]'' when he rounds up [[LegionsOfHell an army of Robot Hell detainees]] to help him "[[UnwantedRescue rescue]]" Fry and the other organic life forms from a PhysicalHeaven in another dimension. [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything The pirate motif is just because Fry likes pirates]].