Perry Rhodan

Here is an interesting idea for a science fiction writer. How about creating a series that is going very strong for almost 50 years. The series has a total of 2500 titles and more are being added on a monthly basis. That is beyond the wildest dreams of even the most ambitious writer of any genre. Well, I have just described the Perry Rhodan series from Germany. I know that most of you may have not heard of this series. I learned about the series around ten years ago in an encyclopedia of science fiction odds and ends that I picked up from the discount table at a Borders bookstore. (I had to give up that precious little gem many years ago in order to clear up some space for other important items, mainly myself.) Unfortunately, the entry was very small and only gave very basic information. So I did not give it much thought after that.

I looked up the series last week because I had relearned about during one of my many time killing trips into Wikipedia land. The series was created in 1961 by the German authors Walter Ernsting and K.H. Scheer. They had to take English pen names because German publishers at the time were not publishing any works written by German SF writers at the time.

The basic story is that the crew of the first manned landing on the Moon discovers an alien spacecraft inhabited by two humanoid members of an a race called the Arkonides. One of the Arkonides has leukemia. The mission commander, Major Perry Rhodan, decides to take the alien back to Earth to meet an Australian scientist who has discovered a cure for the disease. Rhodan makes the fateful decision to use the aliens' technology to force the nations of the Earth to unite in order to fight the many hostile races of the universe.

Along the way, Rhodan is granted eternal life by one of the alien species that he meets. This allows him--and the many writers of the series--to continue his adventures of uniting the Earth and turning it into a major galactic power.

This series is definitely an example of the grand epic space opera genre. During his 3000 years of life, he has traveled to faraway galaxies, parallel universes, and back and forth through time. And according to the sources that I have looked at, he will be continuing to mold and shape the universe for many more millennia to come.

I have tried to find out more about the series, but the amount of English language material discussing the series is very few and limited. Most of the material is in German. It has a very large fan base in Europe. I think that it is safe to say this is Germany's answer to Star Trek, but I think that the latter is far to limited in scope by comparison.

I read the Wikipedia entry on it. I have discovered a website where readers have posted reviews of the individual volumes in English, but it is not complete. It gives the newcomer to the series a very good idea about what happens in the series.
There is an English language fan site that gives the reader links to other sites including German language sites. There are very few editions available in English. I think that it might be because it would be a daunting task to get every issue translated into English. That is just my thought.

I will have to contend myself right now with reading just the summaries on the site that I have mentioned above. I am way too slow of a reader to even think of keeping up with this series.