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Perry Rhodan

Entry updated 11 November 2024. Tagged: Character, Publication.

German sf Space Opera series; individual instalments (mostly novellas) are published weekly by Verlagsunion Pabel Moewig (formerly Moewig-Verlag). Created by Walter Ernsting (who wrote for the series as Clark Darlton) and Karl-Herbert Scheer. Perry Rhodan began in 1961 and is still current: by the 2020s, more than 3000 short volumes in the main series describing Perry Rhodan's (and many others') adventures and mankind's destiny had been published, a record quite without precedent in sf. The weekly booklet series is accompanied by a monthly paperback series, which fills some of the narrative gaps. Often thought of as aimed at the teenage market, Perry Rhodan is actually read, surveys show, by readers of all ages, both men and women.

Though the stories have been dismissed as potboilers, the fans of this German future History (of whom thousands attend Perry Rhodan Conventions) argue that the density and complexity of the multiple universes in which the various story arcs of the meta-sequence are deployed – the most familiar being Meekorah, which basically conforms to the physical laws of our own universe, but which include more than one extensively argued Alternate Cosmos – have built up over so many volumes a sophistication, and in fact a multicursal Cosmology, unheard of in English-language Space Opera before the revival of that form from the 1980s on. The extensiveness of the meta-sequence is also temporal: there are excursions (taking many volumes each) into the Far Future and past (see Time Abyss). Plots and subseries proliferate unendingly from each arc, with recurrent invocations of the fundamental opposition between cosmocrats (order) and chaotarchs (chaos), very similar to the shaping opposition that structures Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion similarly multicursal (though necessarily very much smaller) sequence-array (see Multiverse). It has been said that there is no sf idea which will not, sooner or later, be used in the series.

Perry himself is an Earthman propelled into the Politics of the Galaxy (see Galactic Empires), after unifying Near Future Earth (initially in 1971 but later in various recastings of the origin story) through his mastery of the high Technology and Weapons that he and his team have discovered on a mission to the Moon, where the ancient Arkonide civilization had aeons earlier established a base. His dominion over the home planet is as "benign" as Gray Lensman/Second-Stage Lensman Kim Kinnison's over Earth in E E Smith's Lensmen sequence. Again not unlike Kinnison, Rhodan soon builds his nuclear group, the New Power, into a Solar Empire, exercising totalitarian "emergency powers" when he feels the need; but, more modestly than Lensmen, after renouncing all claims to rule the galaxy, the Solar Empire becomes one of the equal members of the Galacticum.

The series' many critics, especially in Germany, have attacked it not only on literary grounds but also for being what Franz Rottensteiner calls "notoriously fascist". This judgement of Perry Rhodan's reactionary nature has been supported and argued at length by Michael Pehlke and Norbert Lingfeld in Roboter und Gartenlaube: Ideologie und Unterhaltung in der Science-Fiction-Literatur ["The Robot and the Summerhouse: Ideology and Entertainment in SF"] (1970) and by Manfred Nagl in "Unser Mann im All" ["Our Man in Space"] (1969 Zeitnahe Schularbeit #4/#5). During the first years of its existence Perry Rhodan was indeed dominated by military conflicts, but the concept changed so that Perry increasingly concentrated on solving mysteries of galactic or even cosmic scale – with lots of action.

Significant authors include, in addition to Ernsting (Scheer had died in 1991): Kurt Brand (1917-1991), Arndt Ellmer (1954-    ), H G Ewers (1930-2013), Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009), Andreas Findig (1961-2018), H G Francis (1936-2011), Peter Griese (1938-1996), Horst Hoffmann (1950-    ), Hans Kneifel (1936-2012), Kurt Mahr, Marianne Sydow (1944-2013), Ernst Vlcek (1941-2008), William Voltz (1938-1984), Thomas Ziegler (1956-2004), Uschi Zietsch (1961-    ); there are dozens more. Contributors not primarily associated with the sequence include Andreas Eschbach, Gisbert Haefs (1950-    ), Markus Heitz (19771-    ). Voltz was the long-time coordinator and chief author, having early superseded Scheer in this function. Each episode is written by one of the team from a treatment done by the "factory", according to the further development of the series as discussed in an annual authors' meeting. Perry Rhodan has appeared in Comic books, and there was also a Perry Rhodan magazine 1977-1981.

The success of the series has been enormous, and not just in Germany. Translations have appeared in many European countries, including the UK (since 1974), France (1966), Belgium (1966), Netherlands (1967), Finland (1975) and Italy (1976); also in Japan (since 1971), Brazil (since 1975) and notably in the USA, where it was published by Ace Books. Edited by Forrest J Ackerman, the US series – monthly for much of the time – appeared for 118 numbers (1969-1977) in paperback-book format, containing a letter column, articles, new stories and reprints of sf classics in addition to the leading Perry Rhodan novella or (in later volumes) two novellas. A few further Perry Rhodan titles were published by Ace in their Atlans series. The US translation series was briefly revived from October 1997 to July 1998 by Vector Enterprises of California with John Foyt as editor, publishing issues 1800 to 1804 of the original German novella sequence (the last only as a webzine). When all the translations are included, Perry Rhodan has had a readership higher than anything else in sf.

Surprisingly, considering the long-time success of the franchise, there has been only one film adaptation: the very poor ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Morte (1967; vt Perry Rhodan – SOS aus dem Weltall; vt Alarm im Weltall; vt Órbita Mortal; vt Mission Stardust). [HU/PN/JC]

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