

The Return of Perry Rhodan (1998) - Tomte
https://www.sfsite.com/vault/john38.htm

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johnchristopher
Perry Rhodan is _the_ serie my step father is addicted to. For almost thirty
years I enjoyed reading the summary of what's going on in that epic opera pulp
serialized piece of .. writings ? Or something. In the men's reading room of
course.

I tried getting on the bandwagon when I was a teen, I read the first one and
the ?th one (where we learn about Atlan) but there are way too many books to
catch up with so I gave up.

I later discovered the germans where _hundreds_ of books ahead of the french
traduction so I googled it and found the whole cycle which is like 6 times the
150 books already translated. I am a bit sad my stepfather could die without
reading the end.

I read the stories is a little bit shaped by real world social events (fall of
the wall, cold war, hippies rise and fall, etc.) but I couldn't see it because
reading a '73 book in 1999 makes it hard for a teen to see what is actually
transposed in the book.

I can't comment on the S-F part though. From what I read it's really more like
a low-key SF soap opera that is character driven (without much character
development).

Nothing like `modern´ SF (Baxter, etc.). And not much science.

~~~
pantalaimon
> I am a bit sad my stepfather could die without reading the end.

There is no end yet, the series is still ongoing.

~~~
johnchristopher
I know, what I meant is: "The series is likely to go on after his death." :).

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cschwan
German here. I got addicted to it when, as a teenager, I saw them in our local
library. The 3D covers of the "silver books" really got my attention! Inside
they had, in addition to the story, extremely detailed cross sections of the
space ships that occurred in the series. The dimensions and ideas the authors
are really (in a positive way) crazy/gigantic. I also liked that the series
was more or less one connected story. The authors regularly keep unsolved
puzzles, just to explain them years later!

One day I found out that the newsstand on our train station sold current
copies of the series and I was amazed by the fact that they already sold more
than 2000 issues (Current edition is at ~ 2800)! The silver books I read
before were actually just a streamlined version of ten or so issues. So I
starting reading the "first edition", and also bought reprints ... in the end
I think I read maybe half the the whole series, but two or so years ago I
finally hadn't the time keep up.

