What the %&*# is Perry Rhodan?

If you are a fan of science fiction and if, as I do, you have a particular love for space opera, then you probably have come across the name Perry Rhodan.

If you’re anything like me then you would have spent many hours scouring paperback aisles or racks looking for science fiction paperbacks. Sometimes in drug stores or supermarkets or maybe in second-hand book stores. Either way you are bound to have come across a paperback edition or two of the Perry Rhodan books. The English editions, anyways.

And if you are like me you would have asked yourself: what is this Perry Rhodan thing? And you probably would have been warned away from it as I was many times.

Perry Rhodan is a weekly German science fiction pulp magazine series that has run uninterrupted since 1961. The science fiction novel series which has been published each week since September 8, 1961 in the ‘Romanhefte‘ format (digest-sized booklets, usually containing 66 pages, the German equivalent of the now-defunct American pulp magazine) by Pabel-Moewig Verlag, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Group.

As of March 2018, almost 2950 booklet novels of the original series plus 850 spinoff novels of the sister series Atlan plus over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcovers have been published, totaling over 300,000 pages. Having sold approximately two billion copies (in novella format) worldwide alone, (including over one billion in Germany), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written.

The first billion of worldwide sales was celebrated in 1986. The first billion.

Let that sink in for a moment. Can you think of a similar North American science fiction hero who has had such a run? The closest I can think of is Doctor Who and his run was certainly not uninterrupted.

Does this not sound like the most successful science fiction series ever? So how come hardly anyone outside of Germany knows about it?

The magazine was originally founded by Karl-Herbert Scheer and Walter Emsting, two German science fiction writers. Initially it was only conceived to run for thirty volumes, which was ambitious enough. Its popularity within Germany allowed it to run well past the original thirty volumes and now it is still being developed and written by an ever-changing team of authors.

The first 126 novels (plus five novels of the spinoff series Atlan) were translated into English and published by Ace Books between 1969 and 1978, with the same translations used for the British edition published by Futura Publications which issued only 39 novels. When Ace cancelled its translation of the series, translator Wendayne Ackerman self-published the following 19 novels (under the business name ‘Master Publications’) and made them available by subscription only. Financial disputes with the German publishers led to the cancellation of the American translation in 1979.

An attempt to revive the series in English was made in 1997–1998 by Vector Publications of the US which published translations of four issues (1800–1803) from the current storyline being published in Germany at the time.

So what is Perry Rhodan all about? Well, according to Perry-Rhodan.us:

The series begins with the first manned moon landing (in 1971) led by U.S. Space Force Major Perry Rhodan. However, things do not go as planned and the astronauts discover a stranded alien spaceship from a star system called Arkon and its crew who need medical help. The realization that mankind is not alone in space and access to the aliens’ advanced technology lead to the (not entirely trouble-free) political unification of Earth under the eponymous hero-protagonist Rhodan, first expeditions into the cosmic neighborhood, and the eventual founding of first colonies on other planets, all the while trying to keep the more powerful established factions out there (especially the decadent Empire of Arkon, which had dominated local space for twenty millennia) from finding out just where the newcomers hail from.

Over time (over the course of the entire series so far, more than three thousand years pass in-universe), Earth and its colonies evolve into a major power in their own right while other space-faring races lose some of their traditional influence.

Well that all sounds pretty standard space opera, doesn’t it? There are elements of Doc Smith’s Lensman stories as well as Star Trek. But why has Perry Rhodan lasted for so long, achieved this level of popularity in Germany but not elsewhere in the world?

The series and its spin-offs have captured a substantial fraction of the original German science fiction output and exert influence on many German writers in the field. The series is told in an arc storyline structure. An arc — called a “cycle” — would have anywhere from 25 to 100 issues devoted to it, similar subsequent cycles are referred to as a “grand-cycle”.

How can a franchise inspire Books, spin-offs, games, music albums (including one by Tangerine Dream’s Christopher Franke) and even a movie back in 1967 (although Perry Rhodan fans will tell you that there never was a movie made… EVER! That’s how bad it was) and not have been able to break out of its regional popularity the way Doctor Who has? Is it a German thing? Does it not translate outside of the German cultural ouvre?

Perry Rhodan: Pax Terra

In late 1996 the album Perry Rhodan – Pax Terra was released, featuring a number of compositions based on the Perry Rhodan book series — a musical hommage to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Perry Rhodan magazine. With the exception of some vocal parts, sung by Rick Jude and Miko, most of the album is instrumental, stylistically somewhat similar to the material Chris Franke composed for the Babylon 5 series during the same time — in fact, Perry Rhodan – Pax Terra could easily be the soundtrack to an unproduced movie.

According to the album’s liner notes:

“Pax Terra is a musical reflection composed to accompany Perry Rhodan, the largest and most successful science fiction book series ever. Over a billion books have been sold worldwide. For 35 years, Perry Rhodan has taken his readers on exciting adventures into the future of mankind. The Perry Rhodan books, together with the musical impressions of Pax Terra, open doors into new levels of existence beyond time and space. They allow us to explore unknown planets and meet new friends in faraway galaxies.

Caught up in Perry Rhodan’s exciting worlds of adventure, we first fail to realize that we are facing a mirror without recognizing our own reflection. It is a mirror reflecting ourselves and the time we live in. Through Perry Rhodan, we rediscover a new dimension which we all carry within ourselves: the power and creativity of our own fantasy and the hope to one day create a better future with it.

With Pax Terra, Christopher Franke takes his audience on a fantastic musical voyage through the faraway worlds, galaxies and universes of the magical Perry Rhodan books.”

Due to the special occasion the album was available only for a short time and went out-of-print in 1998.

At this point I should come clean and tell you that I have not yet read any Perry Rhodan. I have several of the English language paperbacks but I have never read them. I have been warned away from the books by fellow science fiction fans, yet, there is an appealing allure about the existence of such a successful franchise that very few people, even the science fiction community, has even heard about.

My question then is the one in the title of this piece: What the %&*# is Perry Rhodan? Who out there knows and can share what it is about this series that has captured your imagination?

Who out there knows just what this Perry Rhodan thing is all about? Who out there knows and can tell me why it has endured? And who has any theories about why it hasn’t become a breakout world-wide success like other SF franchises?

In the introduction to the first English-language edition of Perry Rhodan in 1969, Forrest J Ackerman said that “In Germany, all serious SF buffs claim to hate Perry Rhodan, but somebody (in unprecedented numbers) is certainly reading him.” Many American SF fans agreed with the first part of that statement, feeling the series was an embarrassment and too “juvenile”. Tom Doherty, new head of Ace Books in the mid-to-late ’70s, concurred and ended the series in the U.S., even though it was profitable. This decision meant that by 1980, when the original German versions of Perry Rhodan were becoming “more sophisticated and less aimed at younger readers”, the series was no longer available in English.

Critic Robert Reginald described the series as the “ultimate soap opera of science fiction” and standard “pulp science fiction, action stories with minimal characterization, awful dialog, but relatively complex plot development. The emphasis is always on man’s expanding horizons, the wonder of science and space, the great destiny of the human race.”

The series’ beginnings were often criticized for their description of an expansive mankind and frequent space battles; after William Voltz took over the position of storyline planner for the series in 1975 (a post he held until his death in 1984), the series developed a broader ethical scope and also evolved in terms of storytelling style.

But while many critics dismiss the series, many others praise it. There appears to be the conundrum that, especially in the US, the newer, more complex parts of the series have never been published, so critical review tends to be concentrated on the rather simple origins of the series. John O’Neill has called Perry Rhodan “one of the richest—if not the richest—Space Operas ever written.”

The same cannot be said for Perry Rhodan’s first foray into cinematic adaptation. Though fans of the Perry Rhodan series will bend over backwards to even deny the film’s existence, Mission Stardust (or, as it was known in Italian: …4…3…2…1…Morte) is a 1967 science fiction film based on the early novels. See my review of Mission Stardust here.

The future of Perry Rhodan

If you are still curious about exactly what the %&*# Perry Rhodan is, you can read more at the official Perry Rhodan website at perry-rhodan.net. Most of the website is in German but there is a page in English here.

Also for English readers there is, of course, always Wikipedia.