swynn's Perry Rhodan thread

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swynn's Perry Rhodan thread

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1swynn
Modifié : Déc 27, 2017, 5:08 pm

If you're looking for my main thread, it's here.

If you're looking for the thread where I ramble about a cheesy German science fiction soap opera then you've come to the right place. Welcome to the madness!

For those who have never encountered it: Perry Rhodan is the hero of a German science-fiction serial that is marketed as the world's largest science fiction series. I don't know whether that claim is true -- no doubt it depends on one's metric. Measured by words in print, I'm pretty sure that PR has few competitors. The main series has been continuously published since September 1961 in weekly novella-length adventures. Its 2,941st episode was published just this week. Besides the main series there have been over 400 standalone paperback novels, not to mention spinoffs, reboots, miniseries, video games, comic books, and one comically awful movie. And of course, translations. In the 1970s, Ace published English translations, running through most of the first 150 issues. The last Ace paperback was published in 1979, and the series' popularity has never been revived in English despite several attempts.

I first encountered the series as an exchange student to West Germany in 1986. I fell in love with everything about the series: the complicated backstory, the cheesy plots, the terrific covers, even the cheap newsprint. At that time I had access only to the latest issues and random back issues as I discovered them at flea markets so plots were frequently opaque, which actually added to the series's appeal. A couple of years ago I discovered that digitized back issues could be bought in packages online: last year I started from issue number 1, and all of that love came back.

So my own motivations are personal. It's about nostalgia, maintaining language skills, and feeding my inner middle-schooler. I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone else, except in small doses for curiosity's sake. I expect that the audience for my comments is small. But visitors are always welcome! My goal this year is to read 75 of these things, so if it appeals to you then drop by frequently!

2harrygbutler
Déc 27, 2017, 6:14 pm

Hi, Steve! I'll drop a star. I've seen those Perry Rhodan translations from time to time but have passed them up (though I may have read one years ago). I'll be interested in hearing more about the series, in part so I can decide whether to add them to my library next time I run into them.

3lyzard
Déc 27, 2017, 6:25 pm

If you're looking for the thread where I ramble about a cheesy German science fiction soap opera...

Well, naturally!

4drneutron
Déc 27, 2017, 9:40 pm

Oh, cool. Will be watching as you go!

5aqeeliz
Déc 29, 2017, 7:22 am

I always like to start all series from the begining, so this kind of long running series are my nemesis, good thing I don't know any German. :)

Starring to see what all this hype about Perry Rhodan is though, and why no one ever told me about it!

6drneutron
Déc 29, 2017, 8:34 am

By the way, i’ve Got your main thread in The a Threadbook, but thought it would be good to capture this one on the wiki too. I can either link it in the Threadbook next to your main thread or I can put it in as a “group” read in the group wiki, or both. Or something different. 😀

Any preference?

7swynn
Déc 29, 2017, 7:58 pm

>6 drneutron: I have no strong preference. If you have one, I'll rely on your sense of where users are likely to go looking for it since yours is likely better than mine. All other things being equal, I'll opt for a link next to my main thread. Thanks, Jim!

8richardderus
Déc 29, 2017, 8:58 pm

I can't believe someone else knows about this series! I lived with a German-speaking lad for a goodly portion of the 1980s so got into it.

9swynn
Déc 29, 2017, 9:17 pm

>8 richardderus: Hooray! Another fan! I hope this feeds your nostalgia as well, Richard!

10drneutron
Déc 29, 2017, 9:52 pm

>7 swynn: Done! In the Threadbook next to your main thread.

11The_Hibernator
Déc 31, 2017, 1:00 pm



Happy New Year! I wish you to read many good books in 2018.

12rosylibrarian
Modifié : Jan 1, 2018, 1:12 pm

13MickyFine
Jan 2, 2018, 4:52 pm

I like the random German language tidbits that come up as you read these, so I'll probably skim through this thread. :)

14swynn
Jan 2, 2018, 5:02 pm

>11 The_Hibernator:
>12 rosylibrarian:

Happy New Year right back, Rachel and Marie!

15swynn
Jan 2, 2018, 5:04 pm

>13 MickyFine:

Fair enough. I'll mark the language-related posts with the phrase "German nerdery", so they'll be easy to find.

16swynn
Modifié : Jan 4, 2018, 12:51 am

** A Perry Rhodan Primer **

This thread picks up in medias res with episode 35. Here are the basics of the "story so far".

The STARDUST Mission

Perry Rhodan is an American astronaut, commander of the first crewed mission to the moon: the ship is the STARDUST, the year is 1971. As the STARDUST nears its landing site it loses communication with Earth. After a rough landing, Rhodan sets out with the crew's electrical engineer Reginald Bull to find the interfering signal. The signal, it turns out, comes from a giant spheroid spaceship -- obviously of no Earth design.

The Arkonides

The spheroid ship is the AETRON, foundered craft of a crew of Arkonides: humanoid aliens and masters of a vast intergalactic empire. The Arkonides, however, are in decadent decline: all but two of the Arkonide crew are practically catatonic, in thrall to popular entertainment. The two exceptions are Thora, commander of the AETRON, and Crest, its scientific leader. The AETRON is on a research mission, looking for the rumored Planet of Eternal Life, which Crest hopes will revitalize the Arkonides. Because of the Arkonides' general decline, nobody on board can repair the ship and nobody on their home planet will respond to a distress call. Worse, Crest is sick and growing weaker with leukemia. Rhodan strikes a bargain with the Arkonides: he will offer whatever aid he can -- including a cure for Crest's leukemia -- in exchange for Arkonide technology.

The Third Power

Perry Rhodan returns to Earth, but not to the United States. The world is a cold-war powder keg, and Rhodan knows that the balance is too delicate for any single power to possess the advantages of Arkonide technology. Instead of turning everything over to his own government, Rhodan lands in the middle of the Gobi Desert and establishes his own government: The Third Power. Other Earth powers don't like this, but thanks to Arkonide tech Rhodan can withstand all their attacks, even averting nuclear war.

The Mutant Corps

Nuclear research and the development of atomic energy and weapons in the mid-twentieth-century had unexpected side effects: the development of psychic powers among some who were born or raised near zones of high radiation. As Rhodan builds his Third Power, he recruits psychically gifted people to help him fight off alien invasions, establish a base on Venus, and intervene in a hostile invasion of the nearby Vega System.

Perry Rhodan Achieves Immortality

In the Vega System, Rhodan's team picks up clues pointing to the Planet of Eternal Life. Following a long trail of clues and passing a series of tests, Rhodan discovers the planet Wanderer: home to a superintelligent being who represents the disembodied existence of an entire race. This being, known only as "he" or "it" -- and later in the series as IT -- gives Perry Rhodan (and Reginald Bull) a cell-cleansing treatment that preserves his youth for 62 years. This effectively grants Rhodan immortality, assuming that he returns every six decades for retreatment.

Gucky the Mouse-Beaver

Yes, really. Think: Rocket Racoon with a cheerful disposition. Gucky joined the team during the search for the Planet of Eternal Life, smuggling himself aboard Rhodan's ship out of boredom. Gucky is described as resembling a large mouse with a flat beaver-like tail. He is the most gifted member of the Mutant Corps, possessing mutliple psychic gifts, including telepathy, telekinesis and teleportation -- all at unusually strong levels. "Gucky" was changed to "Pucky" for the American translations, for reasons I can only guess. I'm not sure "Pucky" is better.

The Springers

The latest of Rhodan's antagonists are the Springers, also called the "Galactic Merchants." The Springers are Arkonide relations who have a monopoly on interstellar trade: any upstart competitors are nipped in the bud, and they don't approve of The Third Power's incipient trade with the Vega System. Besides a halt to the Vega trade the Springers want the secret to Immortality, obviously worth a fortune to someone willing to sell it. Rhodan is willing to give up neither. He has tried to keep the Springers away from Earth, and recently won a battle to accomplish that aim temporarily -- but the Springer community is much larger and better armed than the fledgling Third Power so Rhodan knows it is only a matter of time before they arrive in the solar system with unstoppable force.

Most recently, Rhodan learned that all Springer patriarchs had been summoned to Goszul's Planet to plan a new offensive against the Third Power. Rhodan managed to smuggle four Mutant Corps agents -- telepath John Marshall, teleporter Tako Kakuta, telekinetic Tama Yokida, and suggestor Kitai Ishibashi -- onto Goszul's Planet. The plan was to convince the patriarchs that Earth was more trouble than it was worth; but when that plan went stale the team detonated a bomb at the patriarchs' meeting. Their Plan B was a qualified success; however their escape plan was a failure: their craft was shot down, leaving them stranded on a planet with a strong Springer presence. And the Springers are angry.

17swynn
Modifié : Jan 4, 2018, 12:52 am



Perry Rhodan 35: Im Land der Götter (= In the Land of the Gods) / Kurt Mahr
Date: May 4, 1962
Tagline: Life on Goszul's Planet becomes dangerous for the "gods" -- for Perry Rhodan's mutants are at work ...

The story so far: The year 1971 was the point in time, when Perry Rhodan -- originally an officer of the US-Space Force -- reached the moon in the rocket STARDUST and, using technology taken from the stranded Arkonide spaceship, founded his Third Power. Disputes on Earth, invasions from space, space battles, fights on distant planets -- all those things this Third Power has successfully survived in the short span of its existence. Now it is the Springers -- those descendants of the Arkonides who for eight thousand years have held an uncontested trade monopoly in the galaxy because they have implacably beaten down any potential competitor -- who represent a deadly threat to all mankind. Perry Rhodan has so far done everything in his power to prevent the Springers from making an enslaved world out of Earth. Levtan the Traitor played an important part in Rhodan's game -- for only through him was it possible to smuggle a group of agents into the "Great Council" of the Springers. These men -- proven fighters of Rhodan's Mutant Corps -- now arrive IN THE LAND OF THE GODS, after having carried out their attack on the Council of the Springers ....

Perry Rhodan arrives at the Tatlira System, but must hover at its edges to avoid discovery by Springer patrols. He begins to worry about the team's failure to report progress. Thinking they might need assistance, he orders Gucky to teleport aboard a Springer patrol ship to go to their assistance.

Meanwhile back on Goszul's Planet the four mutants have to figure out how to lie low until help arrives. This is harder than it first seems: the Springers are able to locate radiation from the Arkonide technology in the team's gear. In order to avoid detection they must carefully cache any equipment that can be used to contact Rhodan. Hiding among the planet's hinterlands they learn that the Springers keep the natives under control by pretending to be gods -- and by appointing robot priests to enforce the official religion in any town or city of reasonable size. So many eyes for the Springers make it difficult to keep their movements secret, and they spend most of the adventure trying to avoid the Springers while also trying to gather information about their operation's success.

Eventually the four meet up with Gucky, who relays instructions to lie low on the planet and be ready for further action. As they scramble to find a safe hideout they also discover that the local religion has its discontents. The planet may even be ripe for revolt ....

Teaser for the next adventure: John Marshall, Tako Kakuta, Kitai Ishibashi and Tama Yokida are actually stranded on Goszul's Planet. But instead of behaving like regular castaways, they rattle the foundations of the Springer leadership with surprise attacks. THE PLAGUE OF FORGETTING is the tool of liberation for an enslaved world ....

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Planet of the Gods. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Matt Graham and Walt Liebscher, and chapter five of a serialization of Richard Vaughan's The Exile of the Skies. It was reissued by Orbit in 1977 with a cover by Bob Layzell.

18aqeeliz
Jan 4, 2018, 5:58 am

Oooh! We want more!

19swynn
Jan 4, 2018, 12:53 pm

>18 aqeeliz: You're in luck! More is coming, probably this weekend.

20harrygbutler
Jan 4, 2018, 12:58 pm

>16 swynn: Thanks for the fill-in. Maybe "Gucky" sounded too much like "gunk" but "Pucky" was considered reminiscent of Puck.

>17 swynn: Cool!

>19 swynn: Looking forward to reading more!

21swynn
Modifié : Jan 7, 2018, 1:03 pm

>20 harrygbutler: Yes, my guess would be something along those lines. Since this is language-related, I'm marking it as nerdery.

** German Nerdery **

The natural English pronunciation of "Gucky" sounds a lot like "Yucky" or (as you point out) "Gunky", which I expect is something the translators didn't want to associate with a recurring hero. So what to call him?

The German pronunciation sounds more like "cookie," but I doubt "Gooky" would have worked since it's a misprint away from "Goofy." The idea of a mouse-beaver is goofy enough without calling attention to it.

Since Gucky was introduced as a practical joker the American translators probably thought "Pucky" more appropriate, Puck being a notable prankster. I don't like it though. To my ear "Pucky" sounds at least as bad 'since it is a Midwesterner's euphemism for excrement -- e.g. "bull-pucky."

In the original text it's explained that Perry Rhodan named Gucky for his large eyes -- an explanation that can't possibly make sense in translation, since it depends on knowing the German verb "gucken", i.e., "to look." (Apparently the writers forgot that Rhodan's preferred languages are English and Inter-Galactish, but nevermind.) If the American translators felt "Gucky" must change, why didn't they choose "Looky", which would solve both the "Yucky" problem and the problem of translating h'is name origin, and which would evoke "Lucky" rather than poop? You could even argue that the same evocation exists in the original, since "Gucky" is phonologically similar to the German word for "lucky" -- glücklich. "Looky" really seems like a better choice all around, but nobody asked me. :)

Personally, I solve the problem by pretending it doesn't exist. On this thread he's "Gucky" as Perry Rhodan intended.

22swynn
Modifié : Jan 8, 2018, 7:47 am



Perry Rhodan 36: Die Seuche des Vergessens (= The Plague of Forgetting) / Clark Darlton
Date: May 11, 1962
Tagline: They fear the great forgetting -- and grant a colonial world its freedom ...

The story so far: The year 1971 was the point in time, when Perry Rhodan -- originally an officer of the US-Space Force -- reached the moon in the rocket STARDUST and, using technology taken from the stranded Arkonide spaceship, founded his Third Power. Disputes on Earth, invasions from space, space battles, fights on distant planets -- all those things this Third Power has successfully survived in the short span of its existence. Now it is the Springers -- those descendants of the Arkonides who for eight thousand years have held an uncontested trade monopoly in the galaxy because they have implacably beaten down any potential competitor -- who represent a deadly threat to all mankind. Perry Rhodan has so far done everything in his power to prevent the Springers from making an enslaved world out of Earth. Levtan the Traitor played an important part in Rhodan's game -- for only through him was it possible to smuggle a group of agents into the "Great Council" of the Springers. These men -- proven fighters of Rhodan's Mutant Corps -- did their part. But now they will do more: they free an entire planet from foreign rule! THE PLAGUE OF FORGETTING serves as the tool of liberation ....

The Mutant Corps continues to undermine the Springers on Goszul's Planet. In the last couple of adventures, they bombed the Springers' council meeting, disrupting plans for an attack against Earth; they then escaped into countryside, hiding from the Springers, their robots, and their local accomplices. As this adventure opens, the mutants make contact with an underground resistance and plan a counterattack.

Violence is out of the question for several reasons; fortunately, Gucky has smuggled a weapon onto the planet that can resolve the situation nonviolently. It's a biological weapon, a case of bombs containing a bacteriological agent causing a disease whose symptoms include severe memory loss. By releasing this contagion the team hopes to disrupt the planning of hostilities agaist Earth, but they also hope to scare the Springers away from Goszul's Planet. If all goes as planned, the Springers will not only leave but will quarantine the planet, giving the native Goszuls time to bootstrap their own government (and incidentally establish trade and diplomatic ties with Earth).

A plan is one thing, but carrying it out is another. For starters, they have to retrieve the bombs, which Gucky had to cache shortly after arrival to escape detection. Then they have to convince the Goszul underground to cooperate in spreading the plague. Finally they have to place bombs on the Springer base for maximum effectiveness ...

Teaser for the next adventure: The Springers fear the "great forgetting" -- they fear it more even than death. So they hastily evacuate the planet and give the Goszuls their freedom, who until now had served as their slaves. But what if the Springers return early .... ? Perry Rhodan has an answer for this case as well. It is: A PLANET GOES CRAZY.

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Plague of Oblivion. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Mark Pines and Melvin Sturgis, and chapter six of a serialization of Richard Vaughan's The Exile of the Skies. It was reissued by Orbit in 1977 with a cover by Tony Roberts.

23swynn
Modifié : Jan 18, 2018, 12:02 pm



Perry Rhodan 37: Ein Planet spielt verrückt (= A Planet Goes Crazy) / Clark Darlton
Date: May 18, 1962
Tagline: Little Gucky has his finest hour -- and Sergeant Harnahan makes an unbelievable discovery ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides.
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials.
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sektor and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle."
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years.
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus.
1981 - The Overhead attacks, and the Third Power survives its hardest trial thus far.
1982 - The "galactic merchants" discover the Earth ...
The year is now 1983, and the Third Power's conflict with the galactic merchants has shifted to Goszul's Planet, to a world that "goes crazy" in order to drive the merchants away for good ....


The last adventure ended with most of the Springers fleeing Goszul's Planet for fear of a memory-robbing plague. Besides a few stragglers, the Springers leave behind a secret shipyard where an experimental craft is being built whose technology exceeds even that of the Arkonides. The ship is nearly complete, and is guarded by a force of 99 battle robots. Not all of the Springers were so eager to abandon the new craft. In particular, Topthor, a commander of the "Superstrong" military clan, sees an opportunity. With his fellow Springers gone, Topthor plans to take the ship for his own purposes.

When Perry Rhodan's sensors detect that 13 Springer ships have arrived in the system, Rhodan quickly sets about securing the ship and the planet. He assigns Sergeant Harnahan into space with orders to serve as a lookout. Gucky, scouts the secret shipyard, then together with the mutant corps, captures one remaining Springer and then the robots for reprogramming. Once the robots are on Rhodan's side they plan a reception for Topthor. Their plan is to feign madness: convince the Springers that the plague is even worse than they imagine; that environment suits are no effective barrier against it and that it can even infect and be carried by robots.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Harnahan lands on a nearby moon. His intention is to set up a base from which he can observe traffic in the system. Instead, he discovers a curious new life form: a spherical being, millennia old, who wants two things: energy to continue its travels, and a meeting with Perry Rhodan.

Teaser for the next adventure: A PLANET GOES CRAZY to win freedom from its oppressors. Using an allegedly incurable plague as a deterrent against the galactic merchants was a complete success -- and Perry Rhodan can now prepare for the long-promised ADVANCE TO ARKON ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as A World Gone Mad. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Forrest Ackerman and Larry Herndon, and chapter seven of a serialization of Richard Vaughan's The Exile of the Skies. It was reissued by Orbit in 1977 with a cover by Bob Layzell.

24swynn
Modifié : Jan 18, 2018, 11:59 am



Perry Rhodan 38: Vorstoß nach Arkon (= Advance to Arkon) / Kurt Mahr
Date: May 25, 1962
Tagline: They expected a friendly welcome -- but they were treated like beggars ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides.
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials.
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sektor and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle."
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years.
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus.
1981 - The Overhead attacks, and the Third Power survives its hardest trial thus far.
1982/83 - The "galactic merchants" want to turn the Erth into a colony world -- but Perry Rhodan turns the tables* and relieves the merchants of an important base.
On Earth the year is now 1984, and the GANYMED is being prepared for an ADVANCE TO ARKON.


Crest and Thora have been trying to return to their home planet Arkon ever since Perry Rhodan rescued them way back in Heft no. 1. Rhodan has been putting them off because the Arkonides rule an interstellar empire -- and when Rhodan meets them he wants to do so from a position of strength. The time has finally come: in the next-generation starship he looted from Goszul's Planet -- newly christened GANYMED -- Rhodan can finally approach Arkon on his own terms. Or so he thinks.

Things do not go as planned. As GANYMED approaches Arkon, they are met with hostility rather than welcome, even though Rhodan sends any and all identification codes Crest can supply. Eventually they are forced down on the planet Naat where they are to wait until Arkonide officials deign to see them. Rhodan gives the Arkonides a day and when they don't show up he puts together a team -- himself, Reginald Bull, and teleporter Tako Kakuta -- to infiltrate the offices of the local potentate. Rhodan intends either to force a meeting with Arkon, or to sabotage the tractor beam that keeps the GANYMED trapped on Naat.

Things do not go as planned. The adventure closes with Rhodan still trapped on Naat, still without meeting the Arkonides. But he is a little wiser: he has learned that there has been a regime change on Arkon since Crest's and Thora's departure. In the interim the Arkonide populace reached such a state of lethargic decadence that machines have taken over the government. The situation is grim, but Rhodan is not yet out of options ...

Teaser for the next adventure: The GANYMED lies trapped in the spaceport of Naat, chained by unconquerable energy fields. But Perry Rhodan has one more trump to play.... Will he and his team manage to leave Naat unobserved and seek out the Imperator of Arkon...?

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as To Arkon!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by PGarcia, and chapter eight of a serialization of Richard Vaughan's The Exile of the Skies. It was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Peter Elson.

25swynn
Modifié : Jan 17, 2018, 11:40 pm

*German nerdery:

The phrase I translate above as "Perry Rhodan turns the tables" is actually:

Perry Rhodan dreht den Spieß um

Literally: "Perry Rhodan turns the spear around," a metaphor rather more pointed. And pointy.

(English nerdery: according to the OED the phrase "turn the tables" originates with rise of board games in the 17th century. To "turn the table," then, would switch the players' positions, exchanging an advantageous position for a disadvantageous one, and vice versa.)

26swynn
Jan 31, 2018, 5:17 pm



Perry Rhodan 39: Die Welt der drei Planeten (= World of Three Planets) / K. H. Scheer
Date: June 1, 1962
Tagline: The ruler of Arkon -- merely a marionette of the giant positronic brain ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides. (Volume 1)
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials. (Volumes 2-9)
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sector and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle." (Volumes 10-18)
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years. (Volume 19)
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks, and the Third Power survives its hardest trial thus far. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The "galactic merchants" want to turn the Erth into a colony world -- but Perry Rhodan turns the tables and relieves the merchants of an important base. (Volumes 28-37)
On Earth the year is now 1984. The GANYMED, the ship captured from the "galactic merchants," has long started its ADVANCE TO ARKON. And so Perry Rhodan has fulfilled the promise he made 13 years ago, to return the Arkonides Crest and Thora back home.
But their reception has left much to be desired, for THE WORLD OF THREE PLANETS has experienced a dramatic change in government ...


The last adventure closed with Perry Rhodan and the crew of the GANYMED trapped by tractor beam on Naat, an outlying planet of the Arkon system. On Naat they are supposed await disposition by the new Arkonide government -- but the new government is in no hurry and Perry Rhodan's skills do not include waiting. After an unsuccessful attempt to sabotage the beam, Perry Rhodan has one last option: the "fictive transmitter" he acquired on Planet Wanderer back in Episode 32. Rhodan crews up one of the GANYMED's disc-shaped ancillary craft, called a "Gazelle." Though the Gazelle cannot escape the tractor beam any better than its mother ship, it won't need to do so because Rhodan's plan is to beam it, not blast it, to Arkon.

Only: which Arkon? It turns out that Arkon is not a single planet, but rather three planets sharing the same orbit. Arkon I, the "Crystal World," is where most Arkonides live; Arkon II is a planet of business and industry; and Arkon III is home to the empire's military and the positronic brain that has taken over the government. Rhodan chooses Arkon I where he hopes to meet Imperator Orkast XXI, nominally the head of Arkon empire. Rhodan makes contact with Orkast conveniently fast, but to little avail. Orkast no longer has the slightest influence over government -- he spends his days making art, and "Imperator" is nothing but a title.

Having no luck with the Imperator, the team seeks out Admiral Kenos, an old associate of Crest and Thora, who is not as decadent as most of the planet. In fact, the Robot Brain has charged Kenos with finding recruits for the Empire's new super-battleships; Kenos is sympathetic to the Crest and Thora and recommends Rhodan's team for a battleship crew, pretending that the humans are actually Arkonide colonists from the planet Zeklon V.

Rhodan's team gets aboard the super-battleship -- a spheroid ship with diameter 1.5 kilometers -- and put it through its paces. Of course they consider the risks and benefits of trying just to steal the ship but decide to wait for a better opportunity, until they get a message from the GANYMED: the Naats are about to discover Rhodan's absence! Realizing they won't get another chance, Rhodan orders his crew to fire up the engines and fight off any robots who try to stop them. They pick up the GANYMED on their way out of the system.

Teaser for the next adventure: Yes, that was the great secret that Crest and Thora kept to themselves for 13 years: Arkon is a world of three planets, a world of technical wonders! And only the fictive transmitter from Planet Wanderer made it possible for Perry Rhodan to visit this wonder-planet! But to leave Arkon he had to resort to a cunning ruse! Perry Rhodan and his people have escaped the ruling positronic brain, but have they yet recovered their freedom ... ? ACTION AGAINST THE UNKNOWN is the impressive and exciting report of the further adventures of Earth's space travelers!

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Realm of the Tri-Planets. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Steven Utley and Matt Graham, and the final chapter of a nine-part serialization of Richard Vaughan's The Exile of the Skies. It was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Angus McKie.

27richardderus
Jan 31, 2018, 6:45 pm

I keep having this vision...Gucky being Googley...as in "Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googley eyes..."

Gotterdammerung being the twilight of the gods, would one evoke the same thing by saying "guttesdammerung" of the death of one god? Specifically asking for use in an alternate history tale involving the death of Bismarck.

28swynn
Modifié : Jan 31, 2018, 7:51 pm

"Gottesdämmerung" would be the twilight of a single god.

I'd never heard the term before, but it has some precedent: here and here.

I ought, though, to disclaim: I'm no expert in the language. I know enough to understand and make myself understood, and read Perry Rhodan while only occasionally consulting a dictionary. (Comments and corrections from native speakers are not only welcome, they're eagerly appreciated.)

29richardderus
Jan 31, 2018, 7:52 pm

Wunderbar!

30swynn
Modifié : Fév 3, 2018, 3:46 pm



Perry Rhodan 40: Aktion gegen Unbekannt (= Action Against the Unknown) / Clark Darlton
Date: June 8, 1962
Tagline: The "Titan" is the most powerful battleship in the universe -- and yet she must hide from her pursuers ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides. (Volume 1)
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials. (Volumes 2-9)
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sector and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle." (Volumes 10-18)
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years. (Volume 19)
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks, and the Third Power survives its hardest trial thus far. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The "galactic merchants" want to turn the Erth into a colony world -- but Perry Rhodan turns the tables and relieves the merchants of an important base. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's advance to Arkon (Volumes 38-39)
Arkon offered surprises even for Crest and Thora, who had lost contact with their home for 13 years, -- not to mention Perry Rhodan and his spacefarers from Terra! And yet they deceived the great positronic brain that serves as regent for the Arkonide Empire. The TITAN, the most powerful spaceship in the known universe, is now in their possession. But to keep the TITAN they will have to start an ACTION AGAINST THE UNKNOWN, a battle against a sinister opponent ...


The last adventure ended with a daring escape in a stolen spaceship: Perry Rhodan and his crew fled the Arkon system in a "Universe"-class superbattleship, which they've now rechristened TITAN. They did not, however, leave unnoticed or unopposed. Fortunately, the frenzy of their escape left their five-dimensional wake almost impossible to trace, so they are safe for now. Probably safe. Temporarily safe. They have no illusions that the Arkonide robot brain will give up the search. Their escape jump landed them in the Voga system, some three light-years from Arkon. And for now they'll have to stay, because any additional hyperspace jumps would certainly be detected.

It's not long before they are contacted by representatives from Zalit, fourth planet in the Voga System. Zalit is home to an Arkonide colony, and Rhodan is initially concerned that the Zalites will betray them. But no: the Zalite leader Zarlt has even more worrisome plans. Zarlt dislikes the idea of being the subject of a machine, so he plots to overthrow the robot brain and take its place. In Rhodan he sees a potential ally, because he knows that Rhodan has stolen the TITAN and therefore knows how to penetrate Arkon's defenses.

But the Zalites are not the only intelligent species on Zalit. There are also a number of telepathic methane-breathing invertebrates called Mooffs. The Zalites explain that the Mooffs are pets, translators, and lie detectors. But the Mutant Corps learns the power relationship is in fact exactly the opposite. The Mooffs are not only telepaths but also mind controllers. It is in fact the Mooffs trying to overthrow the robot brain, using the Zalites as puppets. And even more mysteriously the sedition isn't the Mooffs' idea. (What would a bunch of methane-breathers want with an empire full of oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres anyway?) No, the Mooffs take their orders from an unknown third party, but even the Mutant Corps' best telepaths can't figure out who.

It's a touchy political situation, and Rhodan moves to play all sides. He plays along with Zarlt in order to unravel his plans, while the Mutant Corps contacts resistance fighters. If they play their cards right they can quash the revolution, eliminate the Mooff influence, and ferret out a clever and powerful enemy of the Arkonide Empire -- a service that just might allow Rhodan to negotiate a favorable relationship with a pissed-off robot brain ...

Teaser for the next adventure: The spacefarers of the Third Powers have outsmarted the giant positronic brain that serves as regent of Arkon, and they still celebrate their possession of TITAN -- but their ACTION AGAINST THE UNKNOWN has shown how important it is to have the positronic brain as a friend and not an enemy ... THE GIANT'S PARTNER shows how Perry Rhodan accomplishes that ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. (I love how dude on the left ducks for the logo.) Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Challenge of the Unknown. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by J. Harvey Haggard, and the first chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. This episode's chapter was by Ralph Milne Farley. Challenge of the Unknown was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Peter Jones.

31richardderus
Fév 3, 2018, 3:51 pm

There are also a number of telepathic methane-breathing invertebrates called Mooffs.

*happy sigh*

32swynn
Modifié : Fév 8, 2018, 5:56 pm

>31 richardderus: More Mooffs!:



Perry Rhodan 41: Der Partner des Giganten (= The Giant's Partner) / Clark Darlton
Date: June 15, 1962
Tagline: A world in thrall to the telepaths -- and only the Mutant Corps can break the mind control!

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides. (Volume 1)
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials. (Volumes 2-9)
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sector and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle." (Volumes 10-18)
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years. (Volume 19)
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks, and the Third Power survives its hardest trial thus far. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The "galactic merchants" want to turn the Erth into a colony world -- but Perry Rhodan turns the tables and relieves the merchants of an important base. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's advance to Arkon (Volumes 38-39)
Arkon offered surprises even for Crest and Thora, who had lost contact with their home for 13 years, -- not to mention Perry Rhodan and his spacefarers from Terra! And yet they managed to outsmart the great positronic brain that has served for the last six years as regent for the Arkonide Empire, and to take possession of the TITAN, the most powerful spaceship in the known universe. But to be recognized as THE GIANT'S PARTNER Perry Rhodan must complete an important assignment ...


Perry Rhodan is hiding out on the Planet Zalit. The robot rulers of Arkon are searching for him because he has stolen a superbattleship. But Zalit is not a quiet hideout: Zarlt Demesor, ruler of Zalit, plots to invade Arkon and take the empire by himself. But an underground revolution is brewing, whose members hate Zarlt more than they hate their Arkonide robot masters. And unbeknownst to Zarlt his actions are not his own, for the telepathic Mooffs are controlling him for their own ends ... or for someone else's ...

Rhodan's long game is to ally himself with the Arkonide Empire, robot rulers or no. He establishes communication with the robot brain to explain his position. The robot is a reasonable strategist. It recognizes the limitations of robots, the uselessness of this generation of Arkonides, and the fact that Rhodan has uncovered a genuine plot against the empire. The robot brain listens to Rhodan's proofs of insurrection, and agrees that if Rhodan can resolve the matter favorably then he will be treated as an ally of the Empire and may keep the TITAN as reward.

That leaves only the showdown. Rhodan and Bull confront Zarlt and Gucky leads the rebels in an attack on the Zarlt's palace. But Rhodan miscalculates just how suspicious Zarlt is, how prepared he is that Rhodan might not cooperate, and just how powerful a coordinated psychic attack can be when half a dozen Mooffs team up to break a victim's mental shields. Will Gucky arrive in time? Pffft. You have to ask?

The adventure closes with the robot brain thanking Rhodan for his service and giving him his next assignment: find out who has been using the Mooffs, and stop them.

Teaser for the next adventure: Arkon's positronic regent has recognized Perry Rhodan as a partner -- albeit one on retainer -- and thereby legalized the TITAN's acquisition. But the dangerous mission that Perry Rhodan and his Mutant Corps have taken on for the regent, is far from over, even if the old order can be reestablished on Zalit. A spaceship-trap already waits for the TITAN ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Giant's Partner. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Norbert J. Novotny, and the second chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors, with this episode's chapter by David H. Keller. The Giant's Partner was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Peter Jones.

33swynn
Modifié : Mar 24, 2018, 10:21 pm



Perry Rhodan 42: Raumschiff TITAN funkt SOS (= Spaceship TITAN Sends Out an S.O.S.) / Kurt Brand
Date: June 22, 1962
Tagline: Honur is the grave of spaceships -- whoever lands on the planet is lost!

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded research cruiser of the Arkonides. (Volume 1)
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials. (Volumes 2-9)
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders in the Vega-Sector and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle." (Volumes 10-18)
1976 - Perry Rhodan reaches the planet Wanderer in the STARDUST II and together with Bully achieves relative immortality -- but he loses more than four years. (Volume 19)
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's advance to Arkon (Volumes 38-39)
Under the rule of the great robot brain, the power of the decadent Arkonide Empire has grown again, so that no opponent dares any longer to attack it openly. But the Empire does have opponents, as the secret attack on Zalit has proven. But who are the unknowns who have used the Mooffs for their own purposes? And where can their central command be found ...?


The last adventure closed with a new partnership between Perry Rhodan and the robot brain that now rules Arkon. But Rhodan is not yet ready to share everything. In particular he wants to keep Earth's coordinates secret. But he must send to Earth for more supplies -- and for more crew to operate his recently-acquired (ahem) superbattleship TITAN. Fortunately, the GANYMED is equipped with a "structural compensator" which can prevent anyone from tracking its five-dimensional wake.

So Rhodan sends the GANYMED home under the command of Oberst Freyt, then looks for an out-of-the-way place to lie low while he awaits Freyt's return. A likely hideout is the planet Honur, an uninhabited desert planet in a system with no traffic. In fact, long years ago the Arkonides placed an interdiction on the system, a ban which is technically still in force. Rhodan lands the TITAN on Honur, then leaves Bully in charge while he and Crest make a reconnaissance flight around the planet.

It turns out that Honur is not in fact uninhabited: the descendants of an ancient Arkonide colony still survive, calling themselves "The Purified." The Purified have adorable pets called Nonus that resemble little bears. With Rhodan and Crest in absentia, Bully and everyone else in the TITAN crew accept The Purified's gifts of Nonus to take back to the ship. Back on board, the crew throws a party because they're feeling reeeally good and the Nonus are sooo adorable.

Meanwhile, back on the reconnaissance flight Rhodan and Crest fly over Honus's single mountain range where they discover a graveyard of spaceships. "Graveyard" here is no melodramatic expression for a junkyard: most of the ships discarded here contain the remains of their crew. By the time Rhodan and Crest realize that *someone* has a similar plan for the TITAN, and that the TITAN's crew has been compromised by psychedelic teddy bears, it is too late. And that's even before the alien robot army arrives.

By the adventure's end, Rhodan has saved the TITAN, thanks to assistance from Gucky who is immune to the Nonus influence, and from Julian Tifflor who also was absent from the TITAN when the Nonus were brought aboard; and from reinforcements delivered in the nick of time by Oberst Freyt. But any sighs of relief are premature: three captive Mooffs have escaped the TITAN, leading Rhodan to conclude that the Mooffs and the Nonus are pieces of a single plot which he is no closer to unraveling. Worse, the TITAN's crew have suffered terminal damage to the ganglia of their central nervous systems.

Teaser for the next adventure: Even a superbattleship is powerless when its crew no longer obeys its commander's orders! The situation left by the mass infection was hopeless for the TITAN and her commander -- and only the GANYMED's last-minute arrival rescued them from the attacking robot ships. But what will happen to the seven hundred sick people on board the TITAN? Is a cure possible, or does infection mean a death sentence ... ? Only the plague's creators can answer this question -- and to discover them, Perry Rhodan must return to the spaceship-trap!

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided three interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as SOS: Spaceship Titan!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Norbert J. Novotny and Spencer Strong, and the third chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. SOS: Spaceship Titan! was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Angus McKie.

34swynn
Modifié : Mar 14, 2018, 2:00 am



Perry Rhodan 43: Rauschgifthändler der Galaxis (= Drug Dealers of the Galaxy) / Kurt Mahr
Date: June 29, 1962
Tagline: Assault detachment operation "Landing Party" -- just three men escape the Nonus-plague!

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's delayed return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-42)
When a force of 700 men no longer cares about following their commander's orders, even a giant battle machine like the TITAN falls into severe danger. But what is even worse: the crew who have fallen victim to the Nonus-Plague are already good as dead, for human medicine knows no antidote! Only one hope remains: to find the DRUG DEALERS OF THE GALAXY and make them talk!


Having narrowly escaped the planet Honur in the last adventure, Perry Rhodan now faces the prospect of returning. His original crew of 700 -- including Crest, Thora, Reginald Bull, and most of the Mutant Corps -- are now terminally ill with an illness whose primary symptom is debilitating euphoria. Fortunately he has reinforcements from Earth, including medical staff who identify the cause of the illness: an artificial chemical, argono-hexylamin, which attacks the central nervous system. But who has manufactured the poison? Who used the Nonus to spread it? The most likely source for answers is Honur, where Rhodan feels certain the unknown poisoners must maintain a secret base.

Adventure ensues. Though his original crew is incapacitated, Rhodan has 800 reinforcements recently arrived from Earth, some of which he sends to explore Honur -- duly warned about the Nonus and adequately protected with environment suits this time. Rhodan's agents make contact with the Purified, and also with some not-so-purified natives they just call Honos. The natives offer to show the Terrans the "tracks of the gods." This leads them to a secret cave and mountain fortress, where they encounter various dangers and eventually meet the Aras, manufacturers and traders of all varieties of pharmaceuticals.

Alas, none of the Aras survive the climactic battle -- which leaves Rhodan a little wiser about his adversaries, but no closer to finding a cure for his friends and crew.

Teaser for the next adventure: Perry Rhodan is desperate! The latest mission on Honur has brought to light the authors of the Nonus-plague -- but not the serum he so feverishly sought to cure the artificial sickness! Might Arkon's ruling positronic brain know the antidote ...? Perry Rhodan hopes so. He makes contact with the robot -- only to be given an assignment that he cannot refuse.

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Beware the Microbots, referring I assume to one of the dangers encountered on Nonus: swarms of mosquito-like robots that can deliver a dose of argon-hexylamin through an environment suit. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by George W. Proctor and Gerald W. Page, and the fourth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. Beware the Microbots was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Angus McKie.

35swynn
Modifié : Mar 19, 2018, 9:15 pm



Perry Rhodan 44: Der Mensch und das Monster (= The Human and the Monster) / K.H. Scheer
Date: July 6, 1962
Tagline: The artificial beings attack -- and the riddle of the Mooffs is solved ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1978 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's delayed return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-43)
If you want to be recognized as an agent of the Arkonide regent, you don't have much choice but to accept the Regent's orders and carry them out. Perry Rhodan knows this, and his rebot psychologist reinforces this knowledge. But the positronic brain's order is to fly to the planet of the Mooffs, to a meeting between HUMAN AND MONSTER ...


The last adventure closed with the discovery of the Aras as authors of the Nonus-Plague, and with the inconvenient deaths of all Ara agents on Honur. Where to track the Aras' consipiracy? The only clue is that Rhodan believes that the same group had strategically placed Mooffs on Zalit during the troubles there (episodes 40-41), so the next logical place to seek the Aras is on the Mooffs' home planet.

There are a few problems with seeking out the Mooffs' home planet. First, Rhodan doesn't know where it is so he must ask Arkon's robot regent. Second, Rhodan's team survived their last encounter with the Mooffs thanks only to the psychic talents of his Mutant Corps -- and all of his Mutant Corps save two: Gucky and Wuriu Sengu, who has the ability to see through walls which is cool but not much help against mind-control powers. Rhodan wants backup -- but he has to be careful in asking for it because the robot regent mustn't realize how much of Rhodan's force is affected. When Rhodan presents his situation to the robot brain he learns of a new problem: the regent has already sent an Arkonide fleet to the Mooff homeworld to destroy it.

Negotiations are successful, and Rhodan speeds to the methane-ammonia gas giant Mooff VI where he heads off the Arkonide attack. He receives telepathic warnings to stay away, which he ignores. Upon landing his crew battles Mooffs and a new foe: pulsing grey rubbery teleporters his crew call "Meistersingers" for the musical tones they make when teleporting. Battles are fierce, and at some times they seem to have last-minute assistance from some unknown force. Eventually Rhodan discovers a dome on the planet's surface, which can only be the Aras' base. He destroys the base, but this time manages to capture some Aras for interrogation. It turns out that the Aras on Mooff VI have no idea about the operations on Honur and no antidote for the Nonus-Plague. But they do hint at the next best place to look: the hospital planet and Ara power center Aralon.

Before leaving, Rhodan is contacted by a telepath who calls itself Trorth. Trorth explains that he has been trying to help Rhodan: first by warning him to stay away, then by assisting with battles as he could. It turns out that Trorth is a Mooff, and represents Mooffs who regret the business on Zalit and wish to make peace with the Arkonide Empire and with Rhodan in particular. Rhodan accepts their friendship, and instructs his crew to build pressure suits so that fifty Mooffs can join the TITAN crew.

Teaser for the next adventure: Even at meetings between humans who speak the same language, mistakes that lead to tragic conflicts can sometimes not be avoided. At the first meeting between human and monster, the likelihood of such tragic conflicts that arise out of mutual ignorance is naturally much greater! In any case the humans who landed on the Mooffs' Planet had a bitter lesson to learn. It is quite different in the next PERRY RHODAN-adventure! There it is the Terrans who have a lesson to teach the Aras!

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided three interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Man and Monster. The first edition was published by Ace in 1973, with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Paul Delinger and Donald F. Glut, and the fifth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. Man and Monster was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Peter Jones.

36swynn
Modifié : Avr 2, 2018, 12:18 pm



Perry Rhodan 45: Seuchenherd Aralon (= Epidemic Center Aralon) / Clark Darlton
Date: July 13, 1962
Tagline: Battle fleets are ready for action - but the galactic physicians do not fight with conventional means ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's delayed return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-42)

Heal and help! That is the defining idea of Perry Rhodan's actions. It is not his way to watch idly as 700 of his best people, despite deep sleep and artificial nourishment, undergo a slow but inexorable decay. For the victims of hyper-euphoria, help can only be found from the authors of the plague. And if they will not help freely, then they must be compelled! -- The TITAN's goal therefore is the EPIDEMIC CENTER ARALON ...


The next stop in Perry Rhodan's search for a cure to his crew's hyper-euphoria is Aralon, a center of activity for the Aras. The Aras have a reputation as physicians to the galaxy, but Rhodan has learned that the Aras have been creating their own business by creating and spreading designer plagues that only their antidotes can heal. Rhodan first stops at Arkon, where he presents his evidence to the robot brain. The brain approves action against Aralon and even gives Rhodan command of a robot fleet for backup. But it also warns Rhodan to proceed carefully because despite the Aras' sins the empire still needs their medical services.

Rhodan opts for an undercover operation. He sends Julian Tifflor to Aralon with Wuriu Sengu and the infected Thora and a cover story: Tiff and Thora are supposed to be lovers, and her condition has so worried Tiff that with Sengu's assistance and against orders he has abandoned Rhodan to seek safety and a cure on Aralon. With this story, the team can scout the Aralon base. Intrigue follows, as do peril, capture, escape, rescue, combat, and principled speechifying.

As Rhodan gains the upper hand, the Aras call for help to the "Superheavies," the Springer military clan that gave Rhodan so much trouble when he battled the Springers. The Superheavies rush to assist but after an initial fruitless assault, the Superheavies learn that Rhodan has a superior force. Instead of retailiating, Rhodan lays out the Aras' underhandedness. The Superheavy commander Taralon is impressed with Rhodan's fairness and disgusted with the Aras' business model. He offers Rhodan a cautious friendship.

As for the Aras, Rhodan spares them and their world as well but with a warning. They must stop spreading plagues, and cure those they have already started, or he will come back angry.

Teaser for the next adventure: Many observers followed Rhodan's operations with breathless suspense, for it was the first time in the Great Empire's recent history that someone rose up, took action in the events on Aralon, and taught the galactic physicians a lesson. Will the Aras take this lesson to heart and in the future work only for the galaxy's benefit? The answer appears in the BUSINESS WITH ARKONIDE STEEL ....

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Epidemic Center: Aralon. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Jim Harmon and R. Michael Rosen, and the sixth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. Epidemic Center: Aralon was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Colin Hay.

37swynn
Modifié : Avr 2, 2018, 1:25 pm



Perry Rhodan 46: Geschäfte mit Arkon-Stahl (= Business with Arkon-Steel) / Clark Darlton
Date: July 20, 1962
Tagline: Rescue or destruction of Earth? The memory banks of an onboard computer become the deciding factor ...

Despite appearances this is no tale of Hitler vs. the Cybermen. What appears to be a toothbrush moustache is just a nasal shadow. And Cybermen wouldn't appear on Dr. Who for another four years. So, disappointment. But as a chapter in the Perry Rhodan saga it offers some interesting developments...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-42)

The Aralon mission is finished, in which Perry Rhodan acquired the antidote to the Nonus-plague. His operations for the Robot Brain of Arkon should have ended with that, especially since exposing treachery against the Empire and rounding up the traitors removed a dangerous threat. That's what Perry Rhodan thinks, anyway -- so he asks the Regent for a vaction! But Perry Rhodan's BUSINESS WITH ARKON-STEEL is anything but a vacation ...


Perry Rhodan may have beaten the evil physicians of Aralon, but they refuse to admit defeat. Despite Rhodan's warning they plot to destroy him and Earth. In this they find willing accomplices among the Springer patriarchs, the "Galactic Merchants" of episodes 28-37 who have their own grudge to settle.

Rhodan's new friend, the "super-heavy" Springer captain Talamon, warns him of the danger and offers assistance ... for a reasonable price. Rhodan offers information about a large store of spaceship-quality Arkonide steel, thinking of the spaceship graveyard on Honur (episode 42). Talamon indicates that this would be an acceptable trade and begins recruiting allies, among them Rhodan's old foe Topthor.

Meanwhile Rhodan carries out a complex covert operation. He pretends to take a vacation to Earth but actually hides the TITAN in the gravity well of a gas giant. From there he hatches a counterplot. How much do the Springers actually know about Earth? Topthor knows its coordinates (from episode 32, when Rhodan unwittingly led him to the Solar System), but who else? It turns out that Topthor has kept this information secret against the day he could make a profit off of it, and the current situation seems to have proved him right. But Topthor's business strategy just may be the weak link in the Springers' plans, if Rhodan can insert a team onto Topthor's ship and alter the data stored there.

The adventure closes with Reginald Bull and a team of mutants escaping from a Springer conference on Laros, a moon of the planet Gom. The team has successfully altered the data on Topthor's ship, though not without robot battles and interference from an unidentified psychic power. Though they flee, however, they cannot run away: instead their craft is drawn toward Gom.

Teaser for the next adventure: Because only a single ship's computer held data for Earth's galactic position, it was relatively easy for Perry Rhodan's agents to replace the real data with false ones. But what will happen to Reginald Bull and the eight mutants, who had to hastily flee after their successful mission? And what is the origin of the mysterious powers who turn Bull's craft into their game ball ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Project: Earthsave. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by John Hollis Mason, G. Gordon Dewey, and Max Dancey; and the seventh chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. Project: Earthsave was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Colin Hay.

38swynn
Modifié : Avr 5, 2018, 9:46 am

German nerdery:

From episode 49 "The Earth Dies" (yes, I'm behind on reports):

"Zehn Minuten!" Bullys Augen wurden groß und rund. "Das bedeutet, dass die Springer in genau zehn Minuten ... heiliger Bimbam! Was tun wir denn noch hier?"

That is: "Ten minutes!" Bully's eyes grew large and round. "That means that the Springers in exactly ten minutes ... holy Bimbam! What are we still doing here?"

"Holy Bimbam" is my brand-new favorite expression.

Apparently it's not a Rhodanism, though: it's common enough to earn an entry in the LEO online dictionary, where suggested translations include "Holy mackerel!" and "Holy moly!", which illustrate that English-speakers have no room to ridicule. There is also a similar German expression "Heiliger Strohsack!" which literally means "Holy straw sack!" but really is it worse than mackerel?

39MickyFine
Avr 5, 2018, 12:29 pm

Holy Bimbam should totally be a common phrase!

40swynn
Avr 5, 2018, 5:12 pm

Holy Bimbam! It's a book!

There is something beautifully zen about taking a collection of foreign idioms, translating them literally into English, and presenting them without context or explanation.

41MickyFine
Avr 6, 2018, 10:48 am

>40 swynn: That is utterly delightful.

42swynn
Modifié : Avr 14, 2018, 6:27 pm



Perry Rhodan 47: Gom antwortet nicht (= Gom Does Not Answer) / Clark Darlton
Date: July 27, 1962
Tagline: Gom is everywhere! A race with death in the twilight zone of the Hell planet ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-43)

After what happened on Laros, the Ara-base near planet Gom, it is time for Perry Rhodan to leave the domain of the Arkonide Empire and to prepare Earth's defenses against the impending attack by the Aras and Springers. But as they fled Laros, Rhodan's best people -- Bully and eight mutants -- were pulled away to planet Gom by some inexplicable power. Perry Rhodan waits for a sign of life, but GOM DOES NOT ANSWER ...


Bully's team land on Gom, a planet with gravity twice that of Earth's, in the middle of a furious storm. All hands survive, but their ship is damaged beyond repair. They flee the ship and crawl to a nearby cave to wait out the storm.

When the storm clears, the telepaths make weak mental contact with Gom's predominant life-form, which look like paint spots. The "paint-flounders" haven't much on their mind except feeding -- and their ship's compromised hull makes it a delicious snack. Fortunately, the team's environment suits offer some barrier to the paint-flounders' munching, but not a long-term one. (Later in the story, Bully decides that "paint-flounder" is too silly a name and insists they be called "Goms." Which is pretty boring for a character who spends most of his time as comic relief.)

The paint-flounders are also known to the Aras, who have used the beings as raw material for a bioengineering project, artificially-created monsters called Bios. When the Aras realize that Rhodan's team is stranded on Gom they send an small army of the Bios to finish them off. Good news is that the Bios arrive in ships, which offer an option for escaping the planet. Bad news is, well, the paint-flounders, the Bios, the environment, the loss of communication with Rhodan, and just about everything else ...

Teaser for the next adventure: The TITAN's scientists would like to make an extended study of the strange and dangerous Goms who very nearly made victims of Bully and the mutants. But Perry Rhodan remains firm. He knows it is high time to return to Earth, and to lay the groundwork for a scam of cosmic scope, which is the only thing that can still save Earth from impending destruction. The goal of this deception is to reinforce the attackers' notion that Earth is really the third planet in the Betelgeuse System!

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Silence of Gom. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Greg Akers and M.B. Graham; and the eighth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors. The Silence of Gom was reissued by Orbit in 1978 with a cover by Peter Jones. This was the last of the Orbit releases, two episodes shy of the current story arc.

43lyzard
Avr 10, 2018, 6:16 pm

>38 swynn:

Not quite the same thing, but that put me in mind of the second Godzilla movie, from 1955, in which one of the characters says, "Bakayara", which means something like, "You dummy!" In the American dub of the film, they have him saying, "Ah, banana oil!" :D

44swynn
Modifié : Avr 10, 2018, 9:51 pm

>43 lyzard: I watched the first few Godzilla movies a couple of years ago, and I remember seeing that expression (more than once?) in the subtitles. I assumed it was a Japanese idiom translated literally into English. How interesting... and maybe unsurprising ... that it was a fake Japanese idiom.

45swynn
Modifié : Avr 13, 2018, 10:39 am

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

46harrygbutler
Avr 13, 2018, 9:53 am

>44 swynn: I always understood "banana oil" to be American slang; I've certainly encountered it outside of Godzilla movies.

47lyzard
Avr 13, 2018, 10:17 am

>46 harrygbutler:

Yes, but it isn't Japanese slang; and it's two Japanese characters talking when that particular masterpiece of translation occurs. :D

48swynn
Modifié : Avr 13, 2018, 10:25 am

>46 harrygbutler: Interesting. "Banana oil" was a new expression new to me from the Godzilla subtitles, and my assumptions followed. I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, which supports the claim that it is English-language slang though not exclusively American: the OED's earliest documented use of "banana oil" in print in the sense of "nonsense; insincere or insane talk or behaviour" is a 1927 piece by P.G. Wodehouse in the Sunday Express. Wodehouse was still using the expression in 1960, since it appears again in Jeeves in the Offing. My assumptions were clearly incorrect. Thanks for the nudge to look into it further, Harry!

And I really ought to read some Wodehouse ....

49harrygbutler
Modifié : Avr 13, 2018, 10:25 am

>47 lyzard: Sure, but I wouldn't necessarily expect Japanese slang in the English-language translation, any more than I'd expect a Japanese translation of the dialogue in an American movie where "Applesauce!" is used to translate that literally.

>48 swynn: And Wodehouse's work may be where I first ran into it, though that's lost in the dim reaches of the past. Thanks for the research, Steve! Everyone ought to read some Wodehouse! :-)

50swynn
Modifié : Avr 14, 2018, 4:51 pm



Perry Rhodan 48: Rotes Auge Beteigeuze (= Red Eye Betelgeuse) / Clark Darlton
Date: August 3, 1962
Tagline: An old and nearly forgotten foe appears -- and Gucky wants to see lizards fly ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-43)

To protect humanity's homeworld, threatened by Springer and Ara forces, Perry Rhodan has engaged in a risky deception. If it works then the attackers, guided by "corrected" coordinates stored in the computer of Topthor's battleship, will mistake the third planet of Betelgeuse for Earth! The Betelgeuse system is uninhabited according to the old Arkonide star catalogs -- but is the information still accurate? Perry Rhodan's scouts find more than a surprise as they approach the RED EYE BETELGEUSE ...


Convincing the Springers that Betelgeuse-3 is Earth won't be easy: Perry Rhodan will have to convince them that an uninhabited planet is actually home to a highly-developed civilization; and he will have to leverage a handful of ships into the illusion of an entire fleet. Rhodan's plan begins with sending a recon team to Betelgeuse under command of the telepath John Marshall. The scouts soon learn that the system is no longer uninhabited. The target planet Betelgeuse-3 is uninhabited -- well, it is a "jungle planet" which begs the definition of "uninhabited" but at least it has no intelligent life. But aqueous Betelgeuse-4 is home to a species of torpedo-shaped fish people ... and a recently-established colony of Topsiders, the lizard-people who invaded the Vega-Sector back in episodes 10-13.

The Topsiders aren't any friendlier now than they were back then, but Marshall quickly hatches a plan to turn their unexpected appearance to the Terrans' advantage. The scouts allow themselves to be captured, but present themselves as Springers scouting the system for an attack on a secret Terran base. Then when Marshall and his team make a messy escape, the Topsiders will not be kindly disposed to the oncoming Springer fleet. If they're lucky, the Topsiders may even call for reinforcements ...

Teaser for the next adventure: The surprising discovery of humanity's old foes the Topsiders and their base in the Betelgeuse system, have now been drawn into Perry Rhodan's master plan. But will the Topsiders play along when the Springer fleet and the Aras appear ... ? And Topthor, who has already seen Earth's sun with his own eyes: won't he immediately recognize that his computer's data has led him to a false target as soon as he sees the red giant Betelgeuse ... ? Topthor, that is the key figure in the next skirmish ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Red Eye of Betelgeuse. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Jim Harmon and Angel Arango, and the ninth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

51swynn
Modifié : Avr 15, 2018, 3:42 pm



Perry Rhodan 49: Die Erde stirbt (= Earth Dies) / Clark Darlton
Date: August 10, 1962
Tagline: The end of an epoch -- Earth sinks into a sea of oblivion ...

The story so far: The history of the Third Power in outline:
1971 - The rocket STARDUST reaches the Moon and Perry Rhodan discovers the stranded Arkonide research cruiser (Volume 1).
1972 - Founding of the Third Power against the unified resistance of the terrestrial superpowers and defense against attempted invasions by extraterrestrials (Volumes 2-9).
1975 - The Third Power intercedes in galactic affairs for the first time. Perry Rhodan engages with the Topsiders and attempts to solve the "galactic riddle" (Volumes 10-18).
1976 - The STARDUST II discovers the planet Wanderer, and Perry Rhodan achieves relative immortality (Volume 19).
1980 - Perry Rhodan's return to Earth and the fight over Venus. (Volumes 20-24)
1981 - The Overhead attacks. (Volumes 25-27)
1982/83 - The Springers come to quash Earth's potential as a competitor in galactic trade. (Volumes 28-37)
1984 - Perry Rodan's first contact with Arkon and appointment as the ruling positronic brain's agent in the galactic cluster M-13 (Volumes 38-45) Springers and Aras prepare to destroy Earth (Volumes 46-48)

Earth is to be destroyed -- even for Perry Rhodan's best interests! Of course not the real Earth, home planet of humanity, but the uninhabited third planet of the Betelgeuse system which is "Earth" for the attacking Springers thanks to the falsely-programmed computer on Topthor's battleship! The dramatic production of "Earth's death" must convince all intelligent beings of the galaxy's inhabited worlds: Perry Rhodan's plan is to allow knowledge of Earth's existence to fade into oblivion until Earth can develop itself into a galactic power. Whether that plan will work depends on various factors. One of these factors is Topthor's existence ...


In this adventure Perry Rhodan's plan comes together. The Springers attack; the Topsiders counterattack; and the Springers, mistaking the Topsiders either for Terrans or for Terran allies, believe they have engaged the Terran home world.

It all goes swimmingly for Rhodan. The only wrinkle is Topthor, the only Springer captain who has actually seen the solar system and cannot possibly mistake Betelgeuse for Sol -- and who could blow the whole scheme should he share his knowledge with the rest of the Springer fleet. And indeed, Topthor recognizes something is wrong as soon as he arrives in the system. Topthor withdraws from the space-battle while he contemplates what could have gone wrong and what step to take next ... and on Betelgeuse-4 he meets a Topsider who likewise suspects a trap. Can the Springer and the Topsider communicate their suspicions to their respective forces in time to thwart Rhodan's plan?

Teaser for the next adventure: The goddess of luck and Gucky have brought Rhodan's plan to fruition, whereby Earth has been destroyed in the eyes of all the galaxy's intelligent life. Humanity has thus won some time to develop undisturbed and to begin the construction of a powerful Solar Empire. The dramatic events told in the PERRY RHODAN series' 50th volume, which takes place in the year 2040, bring you to experience the new epoch of human history. An epoch in which Atlan, time's lonely one, plays a grand role ...

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Earth Dies. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by L. Lester Anderson and Sylvius Agricola, and the tenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

52swynn
Modifié : Mai 12, 2018, 5:13 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 50: Der Einsame der Zeit (= Time's Lonely One) / K. H. Scheer
Date: August 17, 1962
Tagline: A fascinating new adventure begins -- the apex of the Perry Rhodan series ...

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan has sought power and recognition for humanity in the universe, but despite clever moves on the galactic stage his efforts have remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity have been, measured on the scale of the universe, too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have now passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
And that seems to Perry Rhodan sufficient reason for a new push into interstellar space.
But before it comes to that, Perry Rhodan meets TIME'S LONELY ONE ...


This one isn't about Perry Rhodan. It's a first-person story from the perspective of Atlan da Gonozal, a new character who will become such a fixture of the series that he will star in his own spinoff series beginning in 1969 and lasting nearly twenty years. Atlan and Perry will soon become very close friends and allies, but first they have to fight. Because that's the kind of series it is: Atlan is such a strong character that dominance must be established. (Guess who wins?)

Atlan is an Arkonide like Thora and Crest, but a very old one. For reasons not yet clear he has been stranded on Earth for all of human history and even longer. He has intervened occasionally in human history, adopting various personas to prod the development of atomic technology in order to build a spacecraft capable of taking him back home to Arkon. But he has also spent much of the time in suspended animation deep on the ocean floor. At this adventure's opening, Arkon wakes from his most recent sleep. He'd gone under 'way back in the early 1970s when some nutjob named Perry Rhodan was building a new country in the Gobi Desert and pissing off people with atomic weapons. No way was human civilization going to survive *that.*

So when Atlan awakes he expects to find a nuclear wasteland. He is shocked to discover that not only has humanity survived, and not only has nuclear war been averted, and not only is Perry Rhodan still around and spry as ever, and not only has Earth turned into a burgeoning galactic power, but after millennia of waiting Atlan discovers he has *slept* through the event he'd been working toward. Ain't it just the way?

He feels he's waited long enough. He establishes a new identity in order to infiltrate Terrania, where one thing leads to another and he stows away aboard an outbound ship with the intent of hijacking it. Unfortunately for his plans the ship is piloted by Perry Rhodan himself, no easy mark. Excitement ensues and the ship crashes on the extremely unpleasant planet Hellgate, where Atlan and Perry Rhodan engage in a battle of wits and endurance.

Teaser for the next adventure:
What a fascinating figure, this Arkonide Atlan!
For Atlan, who possesses a cell activator, the centuries are just like a day!
Atlan has studied humans since the beginning of recorded history, and he has helped humans when helping also furthered his own plans.
We will hear much more about Atlan!
But next we turn to the Ara-planet Toliman, where the HUNT FOR LIFE begins ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Time's Lonely One. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Kris Neville and R.H. Barlow, and the eleventh chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

53swynn
Modifié : Mai 26, 2018, 12:09 am

 

Perry Rhodan 51: Jagd nach dem Leben (= Hunt for Life) / Kurt Brand
Date: August 24, 1962
Tagline: Disturbance in the galactic zoo! A human has escaped ...

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan has sought power and recognition for humanity in the universe, but despite clever moves on the galactic stage his efforts have remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity have been, measured on the scale of the universe, too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have now passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
But Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Empire, is not yet ready to let drop the protective curtain of anonymity. His cosmic agents -- members of the famous Mutant Corps -- are under orders to keep their earthly origin a secret.
Will the two agents placed on Tolimon follow this order, as they begin the HUNT FOR LIFE ... ?


Fifty-six years have passed since episode 49, and many of our characters have not aged at all thanks to the cellular treatment available to humans on the planet Wanderer. Unfortunately, the treatment is not available to Arkonides like Crest and Thora -- which worries Rhodan because he and Thora have married. He desperately wants to keep her around for a while, but Thora is aging. There are rumors of a rejuventaion serum on the zoo-planet Tolimon, and Rhodan sends two agents to investigate: John Marshall, a series regular and beneficiary of the cellular treatment; and Laury Marten, daughter of Mutant Corps members Anne Sloane and Ralf Marten. Marshall is a telepath; Marten can walk through walls.

Tolimon is a zoo and home to a sprawling research institution. Marten goes undercover as a veterinary student, Marshall as a trader in exotic animals. Marshall's cover is very nearly blown when some inconsistencies appear in his story ... but it's Laury Marten who jeapordizes the mission for the oldest reason there is. There are human captives on Tolimon and have been for centuries, kept alive with the mysterious rejuvenation serum. Among the human captives is a half-Spanish, half-Aztec nobleman from the 17th Century, very dashing, and irresistibly appealing to Marten.

Laury Marten falls in love with Rodrigo de Berceo, so when the research institute decides to reverse experimentally the effects of the rejuvenation serum, she must break him out. Unfortunately Laury and Rodrigo don't get far, and their craft is damaged in the attempt. Together with Marshall they go into hiding and send a telepathic distress call to Rhodan. But the planet is swarming with Springers and Aras -- will Rhodan arrive in time?

Teaser for the next adventure:
John Marshall and Laury Marten, the two cosmic agents inserted onto the Ara-world Tolimon, have doubtless achieved a partial victory by acquiring an ampule of the life-extending serum.
But they were not able to leave Tolimon!
Perry Rhodan sees that it is up to him to intervene. He comes with Gucky as THE FALSE INSPECTOR!


The chilling cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Life Hunt. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Forrest Ackerman and Matt Graham, and the twelfth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

54swynn
Mai 26, 2018, 11:47 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 52: Der falsche Inspekteur (= The Fake Inspector) / Clark Darlton
Date: August 31, 1962
Tagline: He who deals with Gucky loses his beard -- or his pants ...

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan has sought power and recognition for humanity in the universe, but despite clever moves on the galactic stage his efforts have remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity have been, measured on the scale of the universe, too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have now passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
But Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Empire, is not yet ready to let drop the protective curtain of anonymity. His cosmic agents -- members of the famous Mutant Corps -- are under orders to keep their earthly origin a secret.
An important mission on the Ara-world Tolimon seems to have broken down, and Perry Rhodan appears accompanied by Gucky to pull his agents out.
Perry Rhodan is THE FAKE INSPECTOR!


John Martin, Laury Martin, and Laury's new squeeze are trapped and hiding on the zoo-planet Tolimon. As the planet's Ara government hunts the Mutant Corps agents Perry Rhodan and Gucky arrive, impersonating an Arkonide inspector and his faithful manservant. Rhodan's disguise is solid, but not without its flaws so Gucky serves as a distraction, encouraging the planet's zookeeper officials to spend more time plotting to kidnap Gucky instead of double-checking Rhodan's credentials. And so they do, following Gucky on a merry chase as he simultaneously scans the area for the missing agents' telepathic signatures.

And because we have all seen The Inspector General we expect that eventually the *real* inspector will arrive, blowing Perry Rhodan's cover and complicating his team's escape. Our expectations are not disappointed.

Teaser for the next adventure:
Accidents can destroy the best of plans! So it happened on the Ara-world Tolimon when Perry Rhodan, the purported inspector of Arkon, was confronted unexpectedly with the existence of a real inspector.
Perry Rhodan and his people nevertheless were able to put the dangerous planet far behind them But no less dangerous is the world to which they flee!
Kurt Mahr tells all about it in his novel with the title THE DAMNED OF ISAN.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Pseudo One. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Forrest Ackerman and Robert Lowndes, and the thirteenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

55lyzard
Mai 27, 2018, 6:39 pm

The fact that the real inspector doesn't travel with a Gucky wasn't enough to give it away?

56swynn
Modifié : Mai 29, 2018, 4:01 pm

>55 lyzard: Yeah ... straining credibility is sort of a series feature, but this one's an outlier even by the usual loose standards.

Pushkin's plot works where you're talking about an environment with marginal communication networks; in the Perryverse with near-instantaneous communication across lightyears the idea that Perry can bluster his way past career bureaucrats with a fishy cover story and an exotic pet is just too much.

For what it's worth, you don't get the sense this episode is intended to be taken seriously. Much of it is just the broad slapstick humor of Gucky's shenanigans. Officious people in uniform lose their pants, for example.

Gucky has his fans. One of them I ain't.

57swynn
Modifié : Juin 10, 2018, 10:40 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 53: Die Verdammten von Isan (= The Damned of Isan) / Kurt Mahr
Date: September 7, 1962
Tagline: Their world suffered a fate that Earth was spared at the last second ...

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan has sought power and recognition for humanity in the universe, but despite clever moves on the galactic stage his efforts have remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity have been, measured on the scale of the universe, too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have now passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
But Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Empire, is not yet ready to let drop the protective curtain of anonymity. His cosmic agents -- members of the famous Mutant Corps -- are under orders to keep their earthly origin a secret.
A mission on the Ara-world Tolimon almost led to a catastrophe, averted in the end by the "fake inspector."
Perry Rhodan and his crew must flee, but in their hasty flight they encounter THE DAMNED OF ISAN.


Escaping the zoo-planet Tolimon, Perry Rhodan and his team look for an out-of the way system where they can lie low until they can be sure they haven't been followed. They comes upon Isan, a planet whose blasted surface is uninhabitable due to the effects of a nuclear war. Isan's remnant population, reduced to some 100,000 from a pre-war population of 3 billion, lives in a number of underground bunkers. And still they fight.

Things are pretty bad in the bunker Fenomat, where food supplies are exhausted and the survivors are surviving on chemically-treated textiles. Worse, they discover that survivors in the nearby bunker Sallon are digging a tunnel toward them, presumably for no diplomatic purpose. Just as the force from Sallon arrives and the battle begins, so also arrives Perry Rhodan. With hypno-beams and the Mutant Corps it's quick work to take over both bunkers.

Though he captures both bunkers' command centers Rhodan doesn't capture Bellal, the erstwhile leader of Sallon. Bellal leads a guerilla campaign and plots to kill Rhodan. The assassination fails but in the attempt Bellal kills Rodrigo de Berceo, the sixteenth-century Spanish count Laury Marten rescued from the zoo. Recall that Laury's crush on Berceo is what started the whole mess. You'd think she'd be devastated by his death, but no: the last few hours on Isan have convinced Laury that Berceo was hopelessly stuck in the 16th century and not somebody she could stand long-term. Actually, she's sort of relieved he's dead. And yes, it's just that creepy.

Anyway, Rhodan eventually captures Bellal and wraps thing up. He calls in some supplies from Earth, which he hopes will be just the first shipment in a long-term trade relationship between Earth and Isan.

Teaser for the next adventure:
Dear Perry Rhodan reader!
Our anniversary issue TIME'S LONELY ONE is surely still fresh in your memory. Many readers have written that it is a real high point of our grand space opera series PERRY RHODAN.
K.H. Scheer has written another, maybe even more fascinating Atlan-adventure that will appear next week as Perry Rhodan volume 54: THE DUEL.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Unknown Sector: Milky Way (I assume because Americans can't say "Damned" in the title of a book with a significant juvenile audience). The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Barrington J. Bayley and Greg Akers, and the fourteenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

58swynn
Juin 14, 2018, 10:15 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 54: Der Zweikampf (= The Duel) / K.H. Scheer
Tagline: The prisoner of the Solar Secret Service plays his secret trump cards. -- The second Atlan-adventure!

The story so far:
For Atlan, the lonely one of time, the centuries are like only a day for he has a mysterious cell-vibration activator.
He has studied humans since the beginnings of known history and he helps humans when such support at the same time advances his own plans.
Atlan wants to return home to Arkon, the world of three planets!
Atlan has come to love the brave little barbarians of Terra -- even if he sometimes does not want to admit it.
Atlan feared the atomic war that threatened in 1971 and retreated to his deep-sea base -- but when he woke from his deep sleep 69 years later he found a world completely changed!
Atlan finds himself near the fulfillment of his longings -- Only one thing stand in his way: Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Imperium!
Perry Rhodan, who thinks only of the welfare of humanity, must deny Atlan the voyage home.
But can Perry Rhodan do that? Or is Atlan the better opponent thanks to his many centuries' experience?
In the exciting duel on the hot planet Hellgate it was Perry Rhodan who proved himself the better!
Atlan has been detained by the Solar Secret Service, but his thoughts are already occupied with the possibilities of a second escape.
Will Atlan achieve his wishes' goal?


Atlan may be a prisoner of the secret service but Rhodan sees him as a future ally, so his detainment is quite liberal. He is even allowed out of his comfortable quarters to lecture at the University of Terrania, an opportunity he uses to mix socially among the students and to groom allies of his own.

Atlan escapes Terrania, jets around the world to throw followers off his trail, hatches a new plan to escape the solar system, adopts a new identity, and makes his way to Venus to meet up with countercultural contacts. From a series perspective, the point is to establish setting: Earth and Venus have changed in dramatically since we last visited them fifty years ago, turning into zippy worlds of the future.

The story ends in a showdown as of course it must: this one taking place in a museum on Venus. Atlan gains the upper hand in this one and very nearly defeats Rhodan -- then suddenly realizes that he likes Rhodan and wants to be his friend and so concedes. It isn't any more plausible than it sounds, but that's how it goes.

Teaser for the next adventure:
Atlan is no longer a danger to the Solar Empire's existence, for the Arkonide has now clearly recognized that that resisting Perry Rhodan's plans is pointless and even deterimental to his own plans.
But then something happens which nobody could have expected: Perry Rhodan's wife Thora is abducted, and the mutants rebel ....


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Again Atlan!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Forrest J. Ackerman, Francis Flagg, and Taimi Leith Saha, and the fifteenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

59lyzard
Juin 15, 2018, 2:19 am

>57 swynn:

Recall that Laury's crush on Berceo is what started the whole mess.

Those indecisive women, huh??

>58 swynn:

Atlan gains the upper hand in this one and very nearly defeats Rhodan -- then suddenly realizes that he likes Rhodan and wants to be his friend and so concedes.

Those indecisive men, huh??

At least he's an equal-opportunity eyebrow-raiser. :D

60swynn
Modifié : Juin 15, 2018, 1:54 pm

>59 lyzard: Laury at least has some justification for her change in feelings. The story does blame their situation on a "girlish trick" (lit.: Jungmädchenstreich), but it's a bit more complex than my summary gives credit. The Atlan thing, though is weird because Atlan says, "Well, if I can't beat him I'll join him" just as he's about to beat him.

One nice thing about the Laury-Rodrigo story is its reversal of a familiar trope. Although Star Trek came later, it makes a good example: every couple of weeks Captain Kirk fell in love with some gorgeous local girl for a single episode only to see her killed near the end, evoking anger and regret.

In this one, we have the young woman adventurer falling in love with a gorgeous local man. How gorgeous? Well, just look at the exclamation points:

Mixed blood -- Aztec blood and Spanish blood had united in Count Rodrigo to a masculine beauty!
How his eyes glowed!
How lordly his mouth appeared!
His nose was a little too large, and exactly this excess gave his masculine face the accent of a glowing warrior, of a proud man!


Per trope, adventure follows. In contrast to the Captain Kirk version, though, in which the adventurer questions his commitment to a life of lonely adventuring we find Laury increasingly irritated by Rodrigo's 17th-century habits and assumptions:

After Rodrigo explained at length and detail how the arrangement of a man's personal affairs would have to confront the fact of his love, Laury's enthusiasm for the Spanish-Aztec count weakened.

Rodrigo's inability to adapt quickly to his 21st-century environment makes him a nuisance and even a danger:

One night, after she had looked after the injured Gucky, Laury found the count in the aggregation chamber. With a multitool he had removed the deckplate of the defense-field generator and was tracing the routes of colorful circuits in the shine of powerful flashlight.
As Rodrigo heard Laury's steps he stood, turned, and smiled at the girl.
"I don't think I'm ever going to find the steam engine," he said sadly.


Even to the reader Rodrigo becomes pathetic. Finally he succumbs to a terminal case of foolhardiness when he runs outside the facility's defense shield. All of this may still be according to trope, as the beloved finds it difficult to adapt to the adventurer's world. But the Kirkish anger and regret? Forget that:

Laury Marten bore Rodrigo's death calmly. Rhodan was happy that she already had seen for some time how her suddenly-ignited love for the Aztec-Spanish count had played a girlish trick.

So: it's an interesting gender-reversal of a trope that was already tired when Captain Kirk started doing it (worth pointing out because this story precedes Star Trek), but the indifference to Rodrigo's death is a bit weird. The authorial tone toward the character is so different from one adventure to the next that I wonder whether one author thought a dashing sixteenth-century count would make a great recurring character, and the next just said, "Hell no I'm killing him."

61lyzard
Juin 15, 2018, 6:02 pm

That sounds more like the situation with Marla McGivers. With Kirk you could just kill the girl off and move on, but Marla had to be left behind with her improbable love interest---and we only have Khan's word for it how it worked out afterwards. :D

62swynn
Modifié : Juin 28, 2018, 9:14 am

 

Perry Rhodan 55: Der Schatten des Overhead (= Shadow of the Overhead) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: Red alert at the Solar Space Fleet -- a cosmic agent sends an emergency call ....

The story so far:
Despite clever moves on the galactic stage, Perry Rhodan's pursuit of power and recognition for humanity in the universe has remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity, measured on the scale of the universe, have been too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have now passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
But Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Empire, is not yet ready to let drop the protective curtain of anonymity. His cosmic agents -- members of the famous Mutant Corps -- are under orders to keep their earthly origin a secret.
Until now Perry Rhodan has been able to rely on his mutants one hundred percent -- but events in the Heprés System show that even mutants are only human with every human flaw and weakness ...


Ralph Sikeron, a Mutant Corps agent on the planet Volat, goes silent after one last transmission: "Three Bells," code for extreme danger to Earth. Perry Rhodan sends Fellmer Lloyd to investigate. Lloyd quickly inserts into Volat disguised as an Arkonide colonist. Hoping to search through his Sikeron's office, where the missing agent worked under the cover of a Springer merchant. Lloyd discovers that the office has already been broken into. Lloyd also meets a Springer, Kuri Oneré, who works in the same building and who knew and liked Sikeron. She tells Lloyd that several others have already come looking for the missing agent, and that before he disappeared Sikeron had confided in her that he might someday disappear and that a friend might come looking for him, and that she should direct the friend to the "All-Wise Mother" of the insectoid indigenes, the Volaters. Though Sikeron's office has been well turned over, Lloyd discovers one ominous clue: an appointment calender, with a delivery marked with the term "Overhead." (The Overhead, being of course, the megalomaniacal psychic supervillain with a silly name who was killed in episode 27.)

After some chasing and shooting, Lloyd makes his way deep into the jungle where the Volaters introduce him to their All-Wise Mother. The Mother tells him what she know about Sikeron's situation: in particular, she knows that Sikeron's enemy was actually two people working together. Lloyd returns to the colonial city, puts together a team to rassle up more clues. It turns out that it is not the Overhead who threatened Sikeron, but two of his former henchmen who have since found service with Perry Rhodan. They are mutants with moderate powers and suspect character whom Rhodan did not offer the life-extending cell-bath. They resent this slight, and intend to avenge themselves by revealing Earth's location to Arkon. To foil the plot, Lloyd must find a way on board the traitors' spaceship, in whose computer the Earth's coordinates are stored. Then escape, if possible.

Teaser for the next adventure:
Two members of the Mutant Corps, the Terrans' strongest force for Peace in the galaxy, have broken their allegiance to Perry Rhodan. But nothing is yet lost, for it seems the two mutants have not yet divulged their knowledge to any strangers! Whether they will continue to remain silent when their situation becomes critical, is another question ....

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Shadow of the Mutant Master. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Kris Nelson and Ralph O. Hughes, Jr., and the sixteenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

63lyzard
Juin 27, 2018, 11:54 pm

That one sounds disappointingly sensible.

64swynn
Juin 28, 2018, 9:10 am

>63 lyzard: Well, Gucky returns in the next episode so ....

65swynn
Juil 2, 2018, 4:53 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 56: Die Toten leben (= The Dead Live) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: The regent of Arkon learns the truth -- and Gucky finds a new friend ....

The story so far:
Despite clever moves on the galactic stage, Perry Rhodan's pursuit of power and recognition for humanity in the universe has remained piecemeal, for the means available to humanity, measured on the scale of the universe, have been too small.
Since Earth's apparent destruction in 1984, fifty-six years have passed.
A new generation of humanity has grown up. And just as the Terran world government developed in its time from the "Third Power," so also from that government developed the organization of the Solar Empire.
Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, and those worlds of the solar system unsuitable for colonization now serve as Terran bases or as inexhaustible repositories of natural resources of all types.
No other intelligent life has been discovered in the solar system. The Terrans are therefore the unconstested rulers of a small realm of planets surrounding Earth.
This planetary realm, at a high level of technology and civilization, naturally has a battle-ready space fleet ready to defy any agressor.
But Perry Rhodan, administrator of the Solar Empire, is not yet ready to let drop the protective curtain of anonymity. His cosmic agents -- members of the famous Mutant Corps -- are under orders to keep their earthly origin a secret.
But when he goes personally to the crisis point Heperés, it is to the unpredictable coincidence that Talamon, the old Superheavy, makes the shocking recognition that THE DEAD LIVE ...


In the last adventure Mutant Corps agent Fellmer Lloyd solved the mystery of Ralph Sikeron's disappearance. But Lloyd's craft was shot down while escaping the planet. Lloyd is left stranded but able to send the distress signal "Three bells" back to Earth, along with the news Sikeron was murdered by Gregor Tropnow and Nomo Yatuhin, two traitorous Mutant Corps agents who plan to reveal Earth's location to Arkon. Perry Rhodan decides to intervene personally, with help from Andre Noir and Gucky. But just before the jump to Volat they get the news that Gregor Tropnow has kidnapped Rhodan's wife Thora. Because alien apocalypse is insufficient motive, I guess.

Adventure follows: Rhodan's space-jet is shot down as it arrives on the planet, they are attacked by hypnotically controlled panther people, they meet up with the Volats and Fellmer Lloyd, and Gucky scouts the enemy headquarters. Rhodan hatches an elaborate plan that involves (1) calling Arkon for reinforcements in response to a local uprising, (2) starting a fight with Tropnow's and Yatuhin's forces, then (3) convincing the Arkonides when they arrive that the traitors' forces are actually anti-Arkon rebels. If the plan works, then Arkon itself will destroy the forces that would have supported it, and will distrust the traitors' news of Earth should any happen to leak anyway.

Spoiler: Rhodan's team very nearly escapes with Earth's secrecy intact, except that the Springer Talamon happens to be on-planet and recognizes Rhodan as he leaves.

Teaser for the next adventure:
The two traitors from the ranks of the Mutant Corps can no longer betray anything, but Talamon has informed the Robot Regent that Perry Rhodan remains among the living. The galaxy's power-political situation already precarious -- and now it happens that even on Earth, political elements activate, working to overturn the current order ....

The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Dead Live. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Matt Graham and Forrest J. Ackerman, and the seventeenth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

66lyzard
Juil 3, 2018, 1:50 am

they are attacked by hypnotically controlled panther people

Aww, I hate it when that happens!

67swynn
Juil 9, 2018, 8:31 pm

>66 lyzard: ... and it's surprising how often it does!

68swynn
Juil 9, 2018, 9:23 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 57: Die Attentäter (= The Assassins) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: They want to murder the Adminstrator of the Solar Empire! The first colonist adventure!

The story so far:
The Robot Regent of Arkon has been informed that the destruction of Earth was nothing more than a cleverly planned bluff -- and thus the moment that Perry Rhodan has been secretly dreading comes dangerously near, of a showdown between the Solar Empire and Arkon.
Is the Terran Empire really strong enough to protect itself against the most powerful attackers ... ?
But Perry Rhodan, the Solar Administrator has still more worries!
Recently, elements on Earth have become active who work toward the overthrow of the current political order.
They are THE ASSASSINS ...


Horace Mullon is an agent for the Upright Democrats, an underground organization who regard Perry Rhodan as a dictator who must be removed in order to restore democracy to Earth. Horace arrives in Terrania on a mission to figure out how to do this. He meets another discontent, Walter Hollander of the Natural Philosophers. The Upright Democrats and the Natural Philosophers have incompatible philosophies but share a single goal -- and so Mullon and Hollander make a temporary pact to eliminate Rhodan. They fail.

As punishment Rhodan sends Mullon, Hollander, and their revolutionary compatriots into exile. Rhodan has a vision of spreading humanity throughout the galaxy, establishing colonies with a variety of political strategies. Mullon and Hollander of course are unhappy with their fate, but Mullon comes to peace with it and looks forward to establishing a democracy in his new home. When Hollander leads a mutiny on the colony ship, Mullon realizes that Hollander would be a leader even worse than Rhodan, and organizes the countermutiny.

Teaser for the next adventure:
In a highly civilized political system like the Solar Empire there is no longer any death penalty!
Therefore the ASSASSINS were sent into exile and lost their Terran civil rights!
And so they have become interstellar colonists!
Will these 8000 exiles be able to master their fate ...?
You will hear more about these interstellar settlers in Perry Rhodan volume 62, while next week Clark Darlton tells about "THE GREAT DISAPPEARANCE," which threatens all life in the Milky Way ....


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Solar Assassins. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Donald A. Wollheim, and the twentieth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

69swynn
Modifié : Août 29, 2018, 7:28 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 58: Attacke aus dem Unsichtbaren (= Attack from the Unseen) / Clark Darlton
Date: October 19, 1962
Tagline: The Unseen attack -- and the great disappearance begins ...

The story so far:
The Robot Regent of Arkon has been informed that the destruction of Earth was nothing more than a cleverly planned bluff -- and thus the moment that Perry Rhodan has been secretly dreading comes dangerously near, of a showdown between the Solar Empire and Arkon.
Is the Terran Empire really strong enough to protect itself against the most powerful attackers ... ?
So far the Solar System's galactic position remains a secret -- so far Arkon can dispatch no war fleet, even if the Robot Regent wanted to take such a step ...
But suddenly there occurs an event that makes allies of Terra and Arkon!
The Robot Regent needs help, for the ATTACKS FROM THE UNSEEN threaten all life in the Milky Way ...


Since learning that Rhodan is still alive, the Robot Regent of Arkon has been sending a continuous broadcast requesting that Rhodan contact it. Rhodan does so, and agrees to meet the Regent's representatives on Mirsal III. He worries that the Robot Regent will be hostile but the interview takes an entirely different direction: the Regent asks Rhodan for help. The Arkonide empire has been under attack by some mysterious invisible force that attacks without warning, is able to remove all of a planet's fauna from colonists to insects overnight.

What Arkon describes is clearly a threat to Rhodan's plans as well so he agrees to help. But no sooner does the meeting wrap up than the unseen force attacks Mirsal III and victims simply disappear. Rhodan is helpless to do anything but evacuate his own forces, but sees losses among them as well. A series of clues leads Rhodan to believe that the force will attack nearby Mirsal II next.

Teaser for the next adventure:
THE ATTACK FROM THE UNSEEN represents a danger in which all intelligent beings of the Milky Way must stand together and find means of defense, unless they want to vanish without a trace like the lamented inhabitants of Mirsal III.
What has happened to the Mirsalese .... ?
Nobody knows yet, but a trail seems to loom, leading to a planet nearer the same system's sun, which will have to be followed if one wants to engage the weird enemy!
RETURN FROM THE VOID -- that is the title of the next Perry-Rhodan novel, in which Kurt Mahr writes of three Terrans who want to rescue a world damned to destruction ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Return from the Void. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Coil Kepac, and the twenty-first chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

70swynn
Modifié : Août 29, 2018, 7:29 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 59: Rückkehr aus dem Nichts (= Return from the void) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: The hole in space swallows the population of a planet -- but three Terrans return ...

The story so far:
Terra and Arkon are allies again, for events have occurred that threaten all life in the Milky Way.
The "Attack from the Unseen" represents a danger, in which all intelligent life in the galaxy must stand together find defenses, unless they want to disappear without a trace like the population of Mirsal III.
And it comes to this, that two superbattleships-- one built on Earth and the other on Arkon -- advance together at light-speed to the second planet of the sun Mirsal, where the weird adversary begins its next attack.
The population of Mirsal II are humanoid. Their civilization has reached approximately the same level of development as Earth at the end of the 20th century.
If the Mirsalese should fall victim to the weird adversary without a fight ...
Perry Rhodan wants to prevent their downfall and dispatches a team of specialists ...


Rhodan's team -- Lieutenant Marcel Rous, telepath Fellmer Lloyd, and cosmo-psychologist Rosita Peres -- lands on Mirsal II just before the "unseen" attacks again. By generating a defensive field, the team is able to ward off the encroaching disappearance-force, though they still have no idea about its nature. The defence-field gives them some flexibility to investigate and to organize an evacuation. They cannot save everyone, though, and Peres counts among the victims.

Whatever the invisible force may be, it seems with few exceptions to disappear living beings only. By examing inorganic objects left behind through radioactive testing, they discover that that objects caught within the force age thousands of years. These findings lead Rous to speculate that the invisible force is actually a different space-time place intersecting our own for reasons yet to be determined. Rous adapts one of the generators of their defensive field, making the generator produce a tightly concentrated field that links the planes in a way that makes it possible to visit the other plane within a bubble of their own space-time.

Rous and Lloyd discover that time moves glacially slow in the other plane, 72,000 times slower in fact: 20 hours pass in our universe while only a second passes in the other. Inhabitants of the other universe are like granite statues.Rous and Lloyd rescue Peres, but otherwise it's an information-gathering expedition. When they return they find the attack from the unseen accelerated so that the defensive field can no longer hold. A partial evacuation proceeds, but the adventure closes with Rhodan's team marginally wiser but no closer to a counterstrategy than before.

Teaser for the next adventure:
The "hole in space" has once again swallowed all life on a planet -- though three Terran special agents have managed not only to outwit the uncanny adversary but to ensure that at least a fraction of the Mirsalese population were saved from the "great disappearance."
The next Perry-Rhodan novel "Fortress Atlantis" is another Atlan-adventure written by K.H. Scheer.
Atlan, time's lonely one, reports from 10,000 years in the past -- though past and present converge with each other, for Atlan has already encountered the uncanny ....


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Attack from the Unseen. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Ralph Hughes and Adrian Hayworth, and the twenty-second chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

71swynn
Modifié : Août 6, 2018, 10:53 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 60: Festung Atlantis (= Fortress Atlantis) / K. H. Scheer
Tagline: Arkonides defend the solar system - 10,000 years ago. - The third Atlan adventure!

The story so far:
For Atlan, the lonely one of time, the centuries are like only a day, for he has a mysterious cell-vibration activator.
Since the beginning of human history Atlan has dwelt on Earth-- as observer and helper of humankind!
Has Atlan played out his secret role as mentor to humanity, now that he has learned about the concentration of power and the civilization achievements of the Solar Empire under the leadership of Perry Rhodan ...?
No and again no! Atlan's knowledge of history and his experiences with the mysterious ones from the other dimension make this old and yet so young Arkonide a key figure in galactic events!
Atlan reports -- and what he reports combines a 10,000-year past with the present into a dramatic whole ...


Perry Rhodan returns to Earth from Mirsal II with reports about the unseen enemy. The story sounds chillingly familiar to Atlan, who relates his memories from 10,000 years ago ...

Back then, Atlan was sent to investigate charges of corruption against the administrator of the Arkonide colony on Venus. After sorting out that mess, he approved an emigration of 50,000 colonists to the next planet over, where they settled a large island they named "Atlantis" in Atlan's honor. Shortly afterward, Atlan was called away to serve in a war against methane-breathing invaders of the Empire. But soon Atlan was recalled again to the colony on Venus, which had been attacked by an invisible enemy and depopulated parts of the planet. Rhodan arranged a an evacuation of Venus, and prepared for a full-on attack by the unseen enemy.

When the assault came it arrived as a wave of destruction, against which conventional weapons were useless. But the Arkonide ships are able to slow and weaken the field temporarily with "impulse converters." The impulse converters were not enough, and many Arkonide ships were lost, along with the entire Venus colony. Atlan and a few survivors escaped to Atlantis, though they knew it Earth was almost certainly the next target. The Arkonides prepared against that day, evacuating all but 10,000 settlers, equipping all of their ships with impulse converters, and building a survival dome deep beneath the ocean.

One more unexpected gesture of help arrived from a mysterious source. A telepathic stranger passed through the system with the news that he/it was interested in helping the Arkonide Empire. He offered Atlan a personalized cell-activator which would make him practically immortal. The stranger also offered plans for a "converter canon", a 5-dimensional weapon able to dematerialize its target.

As Atlan concludes his story, Perry Rhodan identifies the stranger as IT, the master of planet Wanderer where Rhodan himself acquired relative immortality. To Atlan questions about the converter canon, Rhodan responds that there are legends about a powerful weapon that decisively defeated the methane breathers. Unfortunately, the plans for the legendary weapon are lost to time ...

Teaser for the next adventure: Atlan, Crystal Prince and Space Admiral, who knew the old and energetic Arkonides of a 10,000-year-old past, cannot bring himself to sympathize with the Arkon of the present.
Therefore he feels drawn to a true friendship with Perry Rhodan and his Terrans.
Atlan now belongs to the crew of the space-giant DRUSUS -- and with his profound knowledge becomes a key figure in unmasking the identity of the ROBOT-SPY on board ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Fortress Atlantis. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Henry Melton and Elaine MacLane, and the twenty-third chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

72swynn
Modifié : Août 8, 2018, 9:57 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 61: Der Robot-Spion (= The Robot Spy) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Robots make mistakes too -- even when they have two brains!
Date: November 2, 1962

The story so far:
The superbattleship DRUSUS waits motionless in space.
Perry Rhodan waits for signals from the cosmic agents he dispatched to alert him promptly about new attacks by the weirdness from the other dimension.
After thorough calculations Perry Rhodan has concluded that the appearances of the unknown force are not arbitrarily chosen actions, but rather statistically chosen. Based on these data, the overlapping of two time-planes seems to depend on certain rules that can be logically determined with the appropriate means.
And that is the reason wyho not only Perry Rhodan with the DRUSUS, but also many other units of the Solar Fleet have swarmed into space.
The DRUSUS also receives a message of highest urgency -- though this message is nothing other a clever maneuver of the ROBOT-SPY ...


The "message of highest urgency" comes from Jost Kulman, an undercover agent on planet Swoofon; the message is "Three Bells," indicating extreme danger for Earth. The DRUSUS rushes to Swoofon and picks up Kulman along with Muzzel, his dachshund-like "possonkal" pet. Strangely, Kulman insists that he doesn't remember sending the emergency call; what's more he had no reason to send one. Gucky determines telepathically that he's telling the truth. Gucky also strikes up a friendship with Muzzel, who is up for a standing game of hide & seek.

But when the DRUSUS jumps out of the system, the communications crew picks up a strange signal -- one which seems to originate from the DRUSUS itself, one which could be used to locate the ship. When they jump again, the signal reoccurs and they conclude that somebody on board is trying to help Arkon follow the ship all the way to Earth. But who? Kulman and Muzzel are the obvious candidates. But Kulman passes every telepathic examination Gucky puts him to; and Muzzel is clearly nothing but a possonkal. The mystery deepens: at the origin of the latest signal, an investigative team discovers a microscopic transmitter, which really could have been dropped by anybody. And as Atlan approaches the truth he is attacked and knocked unconscious.

Really, the mystery is not especially mysterious. You've probably already figured it out. If the thought of a dachsund spy for the robot overlord gives you a kick -- as it does me -- then you won't be disappointed.

Teaser for the next adventure: It has been shown that even a perfect combination of biological breeding and robot technology equipped with two brains can make mistakes that can lead to a final exposure.
If the Robot Regent of Arkon wants to take further steps to discover the position of Earth -- a secret successfully kept so far -- then he must try something else!
The theme of the next Perry Rhodan novel is a direct follow-up to volume 57 in the series!
Kurt Mahr continues uninterrupted from the dramatic events of his first colonist-adventure, and gives a thrilling account of the further fates of the 8,000 exiled Terrans on the planet GRAY BEAST.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Spybot!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Greg Akers, a poem by Forrest J. Ackerman, and the twenty-fourth chapter of a serialization of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

73lyzard
Août 9, 2018, 1:12 am

>72 swynn:

It does! :D

74swynn
Modifié : Août 10, 2018, 3:56 pm

>73 lyzard: I thought it might. This episode also has this great line:

Wie immer stand Farrington mit seinem Staubsaugerkommando zum Einsatz bereit.

Context is: Once they discover a microtransmitter at one signal's origin, they go hunting for them every time a signal is sent. Consequently, every time the DRUSUS jumps, they have a sort of CSI team ready to sweep for evidence should a signal recur.

As always, Farrington stood with his vacuum-cleaner command ready for action.

"Staubsaugerkommando." It's a word, and this is proof. Now *that* is the action for me.

75lyzard
Août 10, 2018, 9:28 pm

The Staubsaugerkommando don't do housecleaning as a sideline, by any chance??

76swynn
Août 11, 2018, 10:28 pm

>75 lyzard: I expect so. I mean, they have to do something to maintain skills between counterespionage assignments against robot overlords. Might as well monetize that.

77swynn
Modifié : Août 12, 2018, 11:59 pm

Here's one of those cryptic German expressions:

"Hand und Fuß haben", literally, "to have hand and foot"

From episode 75 (yeah, I'm so far behind ...):
Bullys Berechnungen schienen nämlich Hand und Fuß zu haben, wie meine sorgfältige Kontrolle bewiesen hatte.

"Bully's calculations seemed to have hand and foot, as my careful checking had proved."

I'll hide the translation in a spoiler tag for those who want to guess.

"to make sense". The negative apparently is also used: the online German dictionary dict.leo.org suggests "having neither hand nor foot" as a translation for "having no rhyme or reason"

78MickyFine
Août 14, 2018, 12:26 pm

Idioms in other languages are delightful.

79swynn
Modifié : Août 28, 2018, 8:18 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 62: Die blauen Zwerge (= The Blue Dwarves) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: 8000 exiles want to survive! -- The second colonist-adventure!
Date: November 9, 1962

The story so far:
They were eight thousand men and women -- in an age where conquering an alien world should be no impossible undertaking!
On Earth they had been found guilty of fomenting revolution, condemned to permanent exile, and shipped away in a giant interstellar transport ship.
The exiles overpowered the ship's crew and reached a previously unknown sector of the Milky Way.
The ship accomplished nothing more on the new target planet than a crash landing, by which two-thirds of their supplies became unusable. From the rest they built a small town and named it Greenwich. Their new world they gave the name Gray Beast.
They settled in and began to bring the planet under control. They were Terrans and belonged to the most energetic intelligences of the Milky Way. They could have created a paradise - if only it weren't for the enmity between two men: Horace O. Mullon and W. S. Hollander.
One is an enthusiastic advocate of democracy, the other a determined supporter of dictatorship ...


The would-be revolutionaries from Episode 57 have founded a colony, but the rivalry continues between leaders of the factions: Horace Mullon of the Upright Democrats on one side, and W.S. Hollander of the Natural Philosophers. As Mullon prepares expeditions to explore the region near their base, Hollander plans a coup. To complicate the political troubles, a disease breaks out in the colony, whose symptoms are blue pustules covering the entire body.

Political intrigue mixes with worldbuilding, as Mullon and his allies try to manage expeditions while dealing with sabotage, assassination attempts, and insurrection. They meet two intelligent native species. One, a tribe of monkey-like creatures, protects an expedition from hostile wildlife and supplies an antidote to the blue-spot disease. Unpleasently, the antidote consists in a certain leaf chewed to pulp by a monkey-creature, expectorated and taken internally. But, whatever works. The other new neighbors, the "blue dwarfs" are telepathic beings with clothlike bodies so delicate they same to be made of blue light. They are especially helpful because they rescue Mullon after a nearly-successful assassination attempt. So nearly successful, in fact, that Hollander's faction believe Mullon is dead. It takes some time for the blue dwarfs to nurse Mullon back to health, and by then Hollander has taken control of the colony ...

Teaser for the next adventure:
What human healing arts could not accomplish, the medical knowledge of the BLUE DWARFS has made a reality: Horace O. Mullon, the democratic leader of the free settlers, has recovered from his fatal wound, and from now on can apply his energies to benefit the 8000 Terrans exiled to Gray Beast ...
You can read more on the further fate of the 8000 exiles in volume 66 of the Perry-Rhodan series, while in the nechst issue Clark Darlton tells about the MICROTECHNICIANS of the Swaft-System, who first made the ROBOT-SPY possible.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided four interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Blue Dwarfs. (Which was a lesson to me, because I have long thought that the plural of "dwarf" was "dwarves." Blame Tolkien for that.) The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Helen Urban and Matt Graham, and P. Schuyler Miller's chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

80swynn
Modifié : Sep 1, 2018, 7:45 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 63: Die Mikro-Techniker (= The Microtechnicians) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: A space armada hunting for criminals -- 20,000 Swoon are kidnapped ...
Date: November 16, 1962

The story so far:
The men of the DRUSUS actually have every reason to be disgusted with the conduct of the Robot Regent of Arkon, who smuggled a spy into the ship in order to learn the secret galactic position of Earth.
But Perry Rhodan knows very well that the robot ruler could not behave otherwise, in spite of its alliance with the Terrans.
The regent can never be a true friend to humans, for its programming probably prescribes that in any unsolvable situation at first to give up, and then at every opportunity to try immediately to outwit its allies.
The only remedy would be a new programming of the mammoth-robot.
But to undertake such a reprograming of the leader of the Arkonide Empire -- at this moment the Terrans are hardly in a position to do that.
Besides, Jost Kulman's report over THE MICROTECHNICIANS suggests that the Robot Regent has already begun another project to reach his goal ...


In episode 61 Rhodan and his team on the DRUSUS retrieved agent Jost Kuman from the planet Swoofon. After some suspense tracking down a robot spy, Kulman is now able to give his report, and the news is discouraging.

The Swoon are pickle-bodied natives of Swoofon. They have extremely acute vision and manual dexterity, and are ideal microtechnicians. The Swoon have recently accepted a commission from the Springers to build a new device, the compensator-direction-finder, which will circumvent the Terrans' structural compensators, which prevent the Arkonides from tracking Terran ships. Unless the Terrans can rapidly develop a way to thwart the compensator-direction-finder -- yeah, a countermeasure to a countermeasure to a countermeasure -- then Arkon will find Earth and Rhodan's vision is over.

Perry Rhodan, of course, hatches a plan. The DRUSUS returns to Swoofon and the crew pretends to be an Arkonide posse tracking down a fugitive criminal. Rhodan, pretending to be an Arkonide inspector, orders the closure of all spaceports to buy time for the crew to (1) locate the factory where the compensator-direction-finder is being produced, (2) steal plans for the new device, (3) analyze its design to invent a countermeasure, and (4) make enough friends among the Swoon to convince them to build the countermeasure.

Shouldn't take more than a few hours, really ...

Teaser for the next adventure:
The 20,000 Swoon scientists have agreed with little trouble to leave their home and work for the Terrans, so to speak, as foreign guest workers.
The products of the microtechnicians may prove themselves extraordinarily useful in the future for Perry Rhodan's cosmic agents!
Apart from that the Swoon should be able to build a compensator-direction-finder, so that the solar spaceships can continue to escape detection by Arkon.
But there remains the sinister foe from the other dimension, and the threat from this foe must be effectively opposed!
Six Terrans who try, land in TIME-CAPTIVITY ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Micro-Techs. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by J. Harvey Haggard and Christopher Smith, and L.A. Eshbach's chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

The Ace edition has the tagline: "The series critics pan twice a month and readers love 24 times a year!"

81swynn
Modifié : Sep 1, 2018, 7:49 pm

GERMAN NERDERY:

A curious German idiomatic exchange from episode 63:

"... Die bauen einen Kompensatorpeiler, mit dem man Hypersprünge orten kann, auch wenn der Kompensator eingeschaltet ist."

"Ach, du heiliger Strohsack!" sagte Sikerman.

Bully grinste.

"Keine Sorge, wir werden ihnen die Suppe versalzen."


Literally:

"... They are building a compensator-direction-finder, with which they can locate hyperjumps, even when the compensator is turned on."

"Oh you holy straw mattress!" said Sikerman.

Bully grinned.

"No worries, we will oversalt their soup."


82MickyFine
Août 29, 2018, 11:30 am

>81 swynn: Those are delightful!

83swynn
Août 29, 2018, 6:58 pm

>82 MickyFine: Aren't they though? One of the fun things with odd foreign idioms is that, as you think of how they might be translated, you also notice how odd your own language's idioms are.

I mean, is "Holy mackerel!" any odder than "Holy straw mattress!"?

And "We'll oversalt their soup" makes at least as much sense as "We'll rain on their parade" ... or, as my mother used to say, "We'll fix their little red wagon."

84swynn
Modifié : Sep 1, 2018, 7:44 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 64: Im Zeit-Gefängnis (= In Time-Prison) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: And a thousand years are as a day! -- Six Terrans in a strange dimension
Date: November 23, 1962

The story so far:
Lieutenant Marcel Rous of the DRUSUS, who has already collected valuable, albeit extremely disagreeable, experiences in the Mirsal star system through several encounters with the uncanny opponents from another dimension, receives orders from Perry Rhodan to monitor, with a small task force, an Arkonide colony world.
This world, called Tats-Tor by its inhabitants, is the second planet of the sun Morag -- and according to Perry Rhodan's positronic calculations Tats-Tor has a high probability of being the next target of the uncanny force.
Perry Rhodan's men want to warn the planet's inhabitants, and together with the planetary authorities develop possibilities for defense -- but they find themselves thrown into TIME-PRISON ...


Back in episode 59, Marcel Rous and Fellmer Lloyd invented the lens field generator (LFG), which allows transportation between our "Einstein Universe" and the slow-time "Red Universe," origin of the mass-disappearance attacks. Leading a team of six, Rous and Lloyd go to Tats-Tor, a commercial hub of the Arkonide Empire and likely target for the next disappearance. But the team arrives only to learn that disappearances have already begun. They contact the local authorities to offer help, but instead they are themselves suspected of causing the disappearances.

When the disappearences strike the capital city, Rous's team uses the LFG to break through into the Red Universe, where they find themselves stranded. Thanks to the LFG the team has its own Einstein-Universe time-bubble so they can move around freely while their surroundings move at glacial speed. They explore and experiment and discover that they have to be careful about, say, colliding with flying insects who happen to be practically frozen in midair. They also encounter caterpillar-like creatures, whose distorted communications sound like "... ruuuf ... druuuuuf ..." Later, the Terrans will start calling their Red-Universe enemy "Druuf," never mind that the beings they'll eventually call the Druuf aren't the caterpillar-things but something else entirely.

Since we have the name I'll stop saying "mysterious enemy" and "uncanny foe" and say instead that there's a crew of Druuf nearby who somehow notice that Rous's team has invaded their dimension. It's a puzzle to me how the Druuf do this when they're moving 72,000 times slower than the Terrans, but it has something to do with the prisoners they've just kidnapped from Tats-Tor and their temporal inertia. I confess I do not follow the logic of this adventure: there's a lot of time/dimensional bafflegab that my middling German can't crack.

By further bafflegab the crew discover that when they they accelerate the caterpillar-creatures to local lightspeed they somehow bring the caterpillars into the Einstein-Universe time-bubble. This is easier than it sounds, beacuse Red-Universe lightspeed is easily achievable by Einstein-Universe jetpacks. The lightspeed trick comes in handy when they discover a Terran ship that disappeared back in episode 58 in the events on Mirsal III. Rous's team accelerates the crew and communications equipment to Einstein-Universe time then sends a call to Perry Rhodan. But will he answer in time?

Teaser for the next adventure:

Can humans move faster than light even without using spaceships for transportation ... ?
Normally of course such a thing could not happen, but in the world of the Druuf the usual relationships do not rule -- at least not for beings who are not subject to the other dimension's slow time.
The six Terran invaders are so fast, thanks to having retained their characteristic time, that they can even dodge energy beams that approach with lightspeed.
And yet these men see no possibility for leaving slow-motion planet under their own power.
The exciting events of the TIME-EXPEDITION with Lieutenant Rous and his men form the core of the next Perry Rhodan novel.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Prisoner of Time. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Sam Moskowitz and Gary Barber, and L.A. Eshbach's second chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

The tagline on the Ace edition might as well be in a foreign language: "Golden Age Type Scientifiction Scintillates Again in Space Series#1!

85swynn
Modifié : Sep 1, 2018, 7:43 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 65: Ein Hauch Ewigkeit (= A Breath of Eternity) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: A spaceship breaks through the time-wall -- and the Druuf send their servants out ...
Date: November 30, 1962

The story so far:
Can humans move faster than light even without using spaceships for transportation ... ?
In the "normal" universe of course this would be impossible, but on the planet Morag II, stolen by the Druufs, the normal rules no longer apply -- at least not for beings not subject to the other dimension's slow time.
The members of the six-person time-expedition under Lieutenant Marcel Rous, thanks to retaining their characteristic time, are so fast, that they can even dodge energy beams that approach with relative lightspeed! So who can harm them?
And yet, the members of the time-expedition are discouraged! They invaded the strange dimension by means of the lens field generator -- but now that the "window" into their own universe has disappeared they have become prisoners of time and space.


Months after the attack that brought Rous's team into the Red Universe, Perry Rhodan arrives on Tats-Tor. By this time the overlap-zone between the two universes has rolled on, and Rhodan's lens field generator can no longer break through. He spends a couple more months inventing a new version that can open an even larger window. In the space ship SAMBO, equipped with the enhanced LFG, Perry Rhodan enters the slow-time universe, but barely has time to retrieve Marcel Rous's team when his ship is attacked by the druuf. Gucky and Ras Tchubai teleport to the attacking ship, where they seek out the control room and manage to crash the ship. The plan worked so successfully that they jump away to the remaining attacking ships, where adventure ensues.

If the last adventure's rules about time-relations were confusing, the rules in this one are impenetrable. I *think* that the Druuf are able to attack Rhodan's ship so effectively because their ships are time-accelerated craft steered by time-accelerated robots. So the Druuf are speeding up, but also Rhodan is slowing down. It's not clear to me why -- it has something to do with lightspeed -- but the Terrans somehow become naturalized to the local time, which means that it's anybody's guess how many years will have passed by the time they return to Einstein-Universe. In the end it doesn't matter though, because during the final battle the Terrans' fictive transmitter causes a time explosion or something, which not only hurls them out of the Red Universe but also back in time to two short minutes after Rhodan left.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Was it only a lucky break that the Administrator of the Solar Empire protected himself from sinking into the "Sea of Time"?
Or was it fate that allowed the dimension-invading SAMBO and her crew to regain their normal characteristic time ... ?
As that may be -- in any case all who spent time in the Druuf plane feel a BREATH OF ETERNITY!
The next Perry-Rhodan-novel was written by Kurt Mahr and carries the title, WATCHERS OF THE BANNED.
This novel is dedicated to the further fate of the 8000 Terrans on the planet Gray Beast.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as A Touch of Eternity. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by R. Michael Rosen and Raymond James Jones, and Eando Binder's chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

86lyzard
Modifié : Août 31, 2018, 6:28 pm

Ahh, technobabble! - where would SF writers be without it? :)

SAMBO??

Please tell me that's just an unfortunate acronym? I've had quite enough of that nonsense recently, thank you, Margaret Mitchell!

87swynn
Modifié : Août 31, 2018, 11:48 pm

>86 lyzard: Ditto on SAMBO. No, if it's an acronym it's not identified as such. Nor is it a term with some innocuous meaning in German, and anyway it's typical for the spaceships to be given English names. It's also not unusual for the authors to borrow names or terms without appreciating cultural nuances or baggage .... but Helen Bannerman's book had several German translations and adaptations, and that's almost certainly where Clark Darlton borrowed it.

I offer no defense for it. I do observe that according to the Perrypedia we've seen the last of it.

I have no idea whether the ship was rechristened for the English translation, but am curious.

88swynn
Modifié : Sep 1, 2018, 7:42 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 66: Wächter der Verbannten (= Guardian of the Exiles) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: The Peepsies' deadly mistake: Terrans are no slaves -- The third colonist-adventure! ...
Date: December 7, 1962

The story so far:
On Gray Beast, a planet far from the interstellar trade routes, there live 8000 exiles from Earth.
They have begun to settle in to their new world, and have made some progress. In the mountains there are the Mungos, a half-intelligent race of apelike-beings, and the lowland jungle is home to the strange Blue Dwarfs, endowed with astounding paramechanical and parapsychic powers.
The president of the 8000 settlers, who have adopted a democratic constitution, is Horace O. Mullon. His opponent, how will stop at nothing to stop Mullon, is W.S Hollander.
Hollander has managed to usurp the power in the small settler-city Greenwich while Mullon was ranging the jungles with a small research expedition. Hollander believes Mullon is dead -- shot by a traitor!
But Mullon lives, thanks to the mysterious medical arts of the Blue Dwarfs. He knows what has happened in Greenwich, and has returned to the Blue Dwarfs to warn them about Hollander and to seek protection from them. Accompanying him are Fraudy his wife, and Milligan, once a crewman on the spaceship that brought the settlers to Gray Beast and there made a crash landing.
But recently they have been joined by a mysterious young man: Chellish, the GUARDIAN OF THE EXILES ...


With the help of the Blue Dwarfs, Horace Mullon devises a trap to overcome Hollander's defenses. Mullon immediately reestablishes democracy. The surviving settlers vote on Hollander's fate, and after some debate about the morality of capital punishment, execute him.

A few weeks later the colony has returned to peace and everyday routine, when a space ship arrives with a military force of "Peepsies." The Peepsies quickly subdue Greenwich and force the settlers to work at planting crops. With the new master-slave relationship established, most of the Peepsies depart, leaving an occupation force of 200 behind. It doesn't take long for the occupying force to grow discontented and inattentive. This gives Mullon opportunity to organize a few trusted friends to plan a revolt. The revolt succeeds, but Mullon knows that its success can only be temporary unless they improvise a plan for meeting the space ship when it returns again. An atomic bomb should do the trick ...

Teaser for the next adventure:

Captain Blailey, commander of the long-range reconnaissance craft landed on Gray Beast, has received strict orders from Perry Rhodan to intervene only when clear danger threatens the settlers.
So the settlers had to rely on their own resources against the Peepsies who appeared, so to say, out of the clear blue sky.
But what will happen when something like an entire space armada of the interplanetary neighbors should appear...?
The Terran colonists' clever counterattack will be narrated in Perry Rhodan volume 72 (also by Kurt Mahr), while in the next novel Kurt Brand tells about a problem that is Rhodan's and Thora's most personal business -- and that of Thomas Cardif, the son of two worlds!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided five interior illustrations for the original edition. You can see them all at the (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as The Guardians. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Andrei Gorbovskii, and Eando Binder's second chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

89swynn
Modifié : Sep 14, 2018, 9:47 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 67: Zwischenspiel auf Siliko V (= Interlude on Siliko V) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: He is the son of two worlds -- only five people know the secret of his origin ...
Date: December 14, 1962

The story so far:
On Earth it is October 2041. In the Space Academy of Terrania a new class of cadets of the Solar Space Fleet have put their final examinations behind them, some with more success than others. One of the cadets, taken immediately immediately for active space duty, is Thomas Cardif.
Thomas Cardif is the son of two worlds -- and only five people now the secret of his origin: Perry Rhodan, Thora, Crest, Reginald Bull, and Julian Tifflor.
Thomas Cardiff is a son of Terra and Arkon both!
Until now the secret has been kept -- but an INTERLUDE ON SILIKO V shows that Thomas's parents, guided by cosmo-political considerations, have committed a grave mistake ...


We've seen plenty of evidence that Perry Rhodan is an asshole; this adventure tells how he's a crap parent too.

Between episodes 49 and 50 there was a gap of 56 years during which Perry and Thora married. (For casual readers, Thora was commander of the Arkonide research vessel that was stranded on the moon back in Episode 1 which started this whole story.) It now turns out that Perry and Thora also have a son. The boy hasn't been mentioned before because Perry and Thora didn't raise him. Because get this: before the boy was born Perry consulted a positronic brain for advice, which told them that the boy would be charismatic and intelligent and overweeningly proud (overweeningly proud like his mother, everybody keeps saying, but really: who was it set himself up as the leader over all of everybody and decided to take over the universe? Trying to remember ...) Anyway, the advice is that if the boy grew up as son to the most powerful couple in the galaxy, his pride and cruelty would dominate his personality; on the other hand, if he were given a humble birth and were made to work his way up to respectability then his determination and intelligence would have room to grow. So for the good of the child, Perry and Thora gave him up jto foster care.

Now Thomas Cardif is all grown up and graduating with honor at the Space Academy. And *now* Thora wants to be a part of his life, convinced that the last 21 years have all been a huge mistake, so she flies to the Space Academy where she hopes to watch the ceremony and maybe even meet her long-lost-son. But then she is kidnapped by Springers and taken to Siliko V. There follows a wide-ranging search, robot battles, and the requisite big showdown where Perry, Thora, Thomas all meet and secrets are revealed. It does not end well. In fact, Perry finishes the adventure with a brand-new enemy. Somehow Thomas resents having grown up without the love of parents for no better reason than their worry that he might be a bad kid.

It's hard not to take Thomas's side. In fact, why bother? Perry Rhodan is such an asshole.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Yes, it was a grave mistake for Perry Rhodan and Thora to leave their son ignorant of his origin -- for now that Thomas Cardif has accidentally learned the secret anyway, what has happened is exactly what the parents had hoped to prevent with all their deception!
But the Administrator of the Solar Empire has still other grave worries, for the HUNT THROUGH THE DIMENSIONS looms!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck. Bruck also provided interior illustrations for the original edition. Unfortunately, from this adventure forward the interior illustrations aren't posted on Perrypedia. Still, there is a (German-language) Perrypedia webpage for the Heftroman.

This adventure was translated into English as Interlude on Siliko 5. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with Edmund Hamilton's chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

90swynn
Sep 14, 2018, 3:44 pm

>86 lyzard: Re: SAMBO. I visited a used bookstore earlier today that happened to have a copy of A Breath of Eternity, the English translation of Episode 65. The spaceship's name was "Sherbourne." Good choice.

91swynn
Sep 14, 2018, 10:53 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 68: Hetzjagd durch die Dimensionen (= Hunt Through the Dimensions) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: Planet WANDERER has disappeared. -- Must the immortals die ...?
Date: December 21, 1962

The story so far:
The year 2042 is a decisive date for both leading men of the Solar Empire!
It is the year when Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bull must get a second cell shower, no matter what, unless they want to come to a miserable end within a few days.
In 1976 the two men were treated in the physiotron of the artificial world Wanderer, with the requirement to return again in no more than 62 Earth years. Reckoning with the time-dilation the Terrans underwent while returning to their home solar system from the World of Immortals, yields the date of May 1, 20142 as the deadline for a life-extending cell shower.
Since the elliptical path that the Planet of Immortality describes through the universe has been calculated exactly, and since the later cell showers of of other deserving people have gone without complications, Perry Rhodan had no reason to set out early for Wanderer.
But now he must undertake the HUNT THROUGH THE DIMENSIONS, for the source of eternal life seems to have disappeared ...


It's time for Perry and Bully to renew their immortality treatment on the planet Wanderer. But Wanderer is gone. They discover that a front exists nearby where the Einstein Universe and the Red Universe overlap. Further investigation convinces them that Wanderer's orbit has led it into the Druufs' universe. Rhodan's team crosses into the Red Universe and land on a nearby planet. The slow-time weirdness continues: local time here seems to be running 72 times more slowly than the Einstein-Universe.

The crew begins to see hallucinations of a human-like figure suddenly appearing and disappearing on the planet's surface. Investigating the apparitions, they discover a collection of underground tunnels, each of which ends in a room containing six coffin-like boxes. The boxes are rigged to explode upon tampering, which they discover too late in the first tunnel -- fortunately, with time running so slowly they can outrun the explosion.

In the second tunnel, they dismantle the explosives, and open the boxes to discover six parts of some alien creature. When they empty the boxes, the six pieces reintegrate into a single being, who explains that it and its companions are telepathic beings from the planet Solitude. The Solitude-creatures can survive temporary dismemberment, so the Druuf cut them into six pieces and lock the pieces into boxes to use them as sentinels at the universe's edge.

As an early-warning system the strategy seems to work, because a strike force of Druuf robots soon arrive on the planet. Mayhem ensues. When the dust clears, Rhodan's team is able to extract data confirming that Wanderer passed through the Red Universe, but seems to have passed out again.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The HUNT THROUGH THE DIMENSIONS has achieved an initial success, but the source of immortality is not yet achieved!
To search for Wanderer, the men of the DRUSUS must enter the half-space.
Their experiences are portrayed once again by Kurt Mahr in the next Perry-Rhodan-novel.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Dimension Search. The first edition was published by Ace in 1974 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes and the final chapter of "Cosmos", a story written by 18 different science fiction authors.

92swynn
Modifié : Sep 15, 2018, 7:36 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 69: Im Halbraum lauert der Tod (= Death Lurks in Half-Space) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: They have become giants -- on a planet that lies in half-space
Date: December 28, 1962

The story so far:

The year 2042 is a decisive date for both leading men of the Solar Empire!
It is the year when Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bull must get a second cell shower, no matter what, unless they want to come to a miserable end within a few days.
In 1976 the two men were treated in the physiotron of the artificial world Wanderer, with the requirement to return again in no more than 62 Earth years. Reckoning with the time-dilation the Terrans underwent while returning to their home solar system from the World of Immortals, yields the date of May 1, 20142 as the deadline for a life-extending cell shower.
Since the elliptical path that the Planet of Immortality describes through the universe has been calculated exactly, and since the later cell showers of of other deserving people have gone without complications, Perry Rhodan had no reason to set out early for Wanderer.
Already the "hunt through the dimensions" has shown how mistaken this assumption was.
To reach Wanderer now at the correct location, they must press into "half-space," the unstable space between the fourth and fifth dimensions -- but DEATH LURKS IN HALF-SPACE ...


Using data extracted last episode from a robot brain, Rhodan's team calculated that planet Wanderer's trajectory has taken it through the Red Universe and back into the Einstein Universe. But when they fly to the expected coordinates Wanderer still has not appeared. Through a series of experiments and calculations they conclude that Wanderer is stuck between dimensions.

The team comes up with two possible strategies for reaching Wanderer, and attempts both. Reginald Bull and Mike Tompetch approach Wanderer via spacecraft through a dimensional window, while Perry Rhodan uses the fictive transmitter to jump to Wanderer directly. Bully and Tompetch arrive as planned, but have to make an emergency landing when their ship's power mysteriously drains. They also experience some weird dimensional distortion, with kilometers compressed to meters in some directions. Rhodan, Atlan and John Marshall arrive in a craft sent via fictive transmitter. They too find their power drained. Perry meets It, who explains that It is exhausted from passing through the Red Universe, and is soaking up energy to recover.

Time is running out to reach the physiotron, where Perry and Bully must get the cell-shower. Bully takes advantage of the dimensional distortion to cross hundreds of kilometers with just a few steps. He finds the planet's generator bank and gets them running again. This restores power to the planet and to Rhodan's craft so that Rhodan too can reach the physiotron.

Teaser for the next adventure:

They became giants and caused massive storms, as they crossed an entire ocean with a single step!
Then their bodies normalized again, and after Perry Rhodan Bully can also enter the physiotron.
But a strange effect appears and Gucky begins to tremble for his friend's life. Atlan the Arkonide's photographic memory forces a ten-thousand-year flashback to THE LAST DAYS OF ATLANTIS ...
THE LAST DAYS OF ATLANTIS -- that is a new pinnacle of the Perry-Rhodan series!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Death Waits in Semispace. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by King Akers and the first chapter of a new serial: "New Lensman", an authorized expansion of E. E. Smith's Lensman series.

93swynn
Modifié : Oct 3, 2018, 11:20 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 70: Die letzten Tage von Atlantis (= The Last Days of Atlantis) / K. H. Scheer
Tagline: Arkon-ship TOSOMA in final battle: the crew arrests their admiral! -- The fourth Atlan-adventure!
Date: January 4, 1963

The story so far:

Atlan, the ancient and yet physically and mentally young and fresh Arkonide, was there.
He was there, as the super battleship DRUSUS under Perry Rhodan's command after a long and discouraging search finally landed on Wanderer, the artificial planet that contained the source of immortality.
Even without the interention of the mysterious collective intelligence called "He" or "It" the Terrans managed to put the life-extending cell shower into operation.
Perry Rhodan had priority for the life-extending procedure!
Following him was Reginald Bull, Rhodan's oldest friend and partner -- but now appears an effect that makes Gucky shudder for Bully's life, and forces Atlan to a ten-thousand-year flashback to THE LAST DAYS OF ATLANTIS ...


The youth-extending "cell shower" treatment goes as planned for Perry Rhodan, but while Reginald Bull's treatment is interrupted by a hyperspace disturbance. Instead of extending Bull's current health by 62 more years, the process causes him to grow younger ... and will take him to infancy if it is not stopped. For technobabbley reasons the team thinks repeating the procedure in the Red Universe will fix the problem so they dismantle the physiotron and carry it into Druuf-space.

Meanwhile, Atlan flashes back ten thousand years to events following the flashback in episode 60. Following the Druuf attack on Venus, Atlan is down to just two battleships and a handful of smaller ships. Most of the adventure follows Atlan's losing battle against the Druuf. Finally, Atlan's own men strand him on Earth where he can be sheltered in his undersea dome and have some hope of survival. He is the only Arkonide settler to survive.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Once again, thanks to Atlan's vivid storytelling, a chapter of Earth's early history is brought from the darkness of mythology into the light: the last days of Atlantis!
Perry Rhodan volume 71 concerns itself with a completely different problem, that is nevertheless just as urgent as an attack from another dimension. Can the Robot Regent of Arkon already determine Earth's coordinates or not ...?
Major Clyde Ostal and 32 men of the Solar Secret Service are sent out to determine that very thing -- and that's how it comes to a MISJUMP OF THE TIGRIS!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Last Days of Atlantis. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short stories by Dale Hammell and Barnaby Rapoport, and chapter 2 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman."

94swynn
Modifié : Oct 18, 2018, 2:57 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 71: Fehlsprung der TIGRIS (= Mis-jump of the TIGRIS) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: 32 men of the Solar Defense Service on a special mission against the Robot Regent!
Date: January 11, 1963

The story so far:

Clyde Ostal, a tested officer of the Solar Defense Service, receives in June 2042 the assignment from Perry Rhodan, to take over the armed freighter TIGRIS.
Clyde Ostal and 32 members of the Solar Defense Service who have been screen a hundred ways, are to start from the Earth into space with the special mission to determine whether Robot Regent of Arken is already in a position to measure the characteristic frequencies of structural compensators and thereby determine the location of transiting spaceships.
But before Major Ostal takes off, the machines of his ship and the memory banks of the onboard positronic computers are prepared for a MIS-JUMP OF THE TIGRIS, all according to plan ...


Earth has so far remained safe from Arkonide attacks for the simple reason that Arkon doesn't know Earth's location. Terran ships are outfitted with "structural compensators," which make it impossible to track the ships through a hyperspace jump. But recently (Episode 63), Perry Rhodan and his team learned that the Arkonides have hired the microtechnicians of Swoofon to develop a compensator-direction-finder, which would be able to track even those ships with structural compensators. The Terrans have developed a countermeasure, the characteristic-vibration-damper but it's taking time to get all the Terran ships upgraded. Rhodan wants to know whether he's already run out of time: are Arkonide ships already equipped with the compensator-direction-finders?

Being Perry Rhodan, he hatches an elaborate scheme to find out.

The scheme involves an undercover team of agents masquerading as merchants, who will execute several jumps ending in Arkon's Naral System, watching to see whether the Arkonides can track them. But since no Terran merchant would go to Naral on purpose, the TIGRIS's navigation computers are precisely sabotaged to make it look like the Naral jump is a technical failure. Of course the TIGRIS also carries false coordinates for Earth's location as well. Rhodan himself takes the LOTUS to the edge of the Naral System, to lead the extraction when the TIGRIS crew finish their mission.

The TIGRIS's failed jump is successful, and the ship is indeed tracked despite its structural compensator. Its crew is detained and Arkonide forces examine the ship's computer, all according to plan. Excitement ensues as the TIGRIS's crew find their way back off planet.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Again it is Perry Rhodan who in his old familiar freshness has not only filled the post of Solar Administrator for decades, but is extremely active in personally engaging in the happenings in space.
In any case Perry Rhodan has won another small victory against the Robot Regent but the big question -- how long can his luck hold out? -- becomes ever more acute ....
And the events on Gray Beast, the planet of exiles, relentlessly approach their dangerous climax!
You can read more about that in THE EMISSARIES OF AURIGEL by Kurt Mahr ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Tigris Leaps. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short story by Walt Liebscher, and chapter 3 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman."

95swynn
Modifié : Oct 18, 2018, 11:18 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 72: Die Gesandten von Aurigel (= The Emissaries from Aurigel) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: FAIR LADY reveals her origins -- the fourth colonist-adventure!
Date: January 18, 1963

The story so far:

On Gray Beast, the seventh planet of the Myrtha System, far from the routes of interstellar space travel, there live 8,000 exiles from Earth.
They have begun to build on their new world, and achieved progress. They have established that their new home does not belong to them alone. In the mountains there are the Mungos, a half-intelligent race of apes, and in the lowland jungle there live the strange Blue Dwarves, who have astounding paramechanical and parapsychological powers.
But the System's twelfth planet also carries intelligent life: the so-called Peepsies, whose recent invasion very nearly called the further existence of the Terran colony into question.
With help from the repaired spacecraft FAIR LADY, the colony's leaders decide to pay the Peepsies a visit, in order to nip in the bud any further plans for invasion by the residents of the 12th planet.
The Terrans appear as THE EMISSARIES FROM AURIGEL -- though their intentions have a surprising outcome ...


Back in Episode 66, the Terran colony on Gray Beast was invaded by the Peepsies, who put the colonists to work as slave labor. The plucky colonists staged a revolt, and successfully overthrew the Peepsies on planet. Problem is, more Peepsies will show up eventually and with overwhelming force. If the Terrans want long-term freedom they have to come up with a plan. Fortunately, plans are what Terrans do.

The FAIR LADY is the ship of Gunter Chellish, a Terran agent sent to Gray Beast to keep an eye on the colonists. Chellish is part of the team now, and organizes a voyage to the Peepsies' world. Team members will pretend to be from the (imaginary) world Aurigel, four light-years from the Myrtha System, and in possession of military powers far greater than the Peepsies'. The team knows that some high-ranking Peepsies may have heard the colonists speaking English on Gray Beast, so they agree that the language of Aurigel will be French.

Things go well initially when Chellish's team arrives on the twelfth planet, but some Peepsies are suspicious. Eventually the ruse is exposed when linguistic analysis reveals that the script "FAIR LADY" on the "Aurigelian" ship is actually in the language of the colonists and not that of "Aurigel" -- if such a place even exists, that is. Chellish's cover is blown and thrills follow.

It turns out, though, that the Gray Beast colonists really *do* have a superior military might on their side when a Terran battleship unexpectedly appears.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The Planet Gray Beast and the entire Myrtha-System have, practically overnight, taken on the greatest importance, and mathematical calculations show that this system will overlap the Druufs' time-plane in approximately 10 months.
Perry Rhodan develops a plan to invade the other dimension with strong forces, beginning from Gray Beast.
But his ambitious plan has a few holes, as shown in THE THREE DESERTERS ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Ambassadors from Aurigel. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Donald Franson and Larry Carmody, and chapter 4 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman."

96swynn
Modifié : Oct 22, 2018, 2:33 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 73: Die drei Deserteure (= The Three Deserters) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: A new move in the galactic battle of nerves! 7,000 destroyer ships ready for action!
Date: January 25, 1963

The story so far:

On Gray Beast, the seventh planet of the Myrtha System, far from the routes of interstellar space travel, there live 8,000 exiles from Earth.
The political exiles under the leadership of Horace O. Mullon, after many initial hardships, have proven that even under the most adverse conditions they are able to hold their own as free settlers. (See Perry Rhodan volumes 57, 62, 66, and 72.)
But when mathematical calculations indicate that the Myrtha-System will overlap the Druuf time-plane in about ten months Terran time, the time comes to bid farewell for many colonists who have fully accepted the planet Gray Beast as their home and the future home of the children.
Part of the settlers will evacuate to Venus, the first of Earth's colonies, while the other will begin service on the newly-built base for the Solar Fleet at Gray Beast.
However, Perry Rhodan's specialists seem not to have sufficiently selected among those willing to serve, for otherwise THE THREE DESERTERS would have hardly had a chance to carry out their plans ...


Among the former colonists who volunteer for duty at the new military base on Gary Beast are three discontents who plan to desert. They overpower a pilot, Gunter Chellish, and take off in a light cruiser with Chellish as a hostage. They force Chellish to fly the ship under their instructions to a distant region of space. One of the deserters knows his way around a ship well enough to know whether Chellish is following orders -- as a failed attempt to fool the deserters painfully proves. However, Chellish is able to sabotage the ship's characteristic-vibration-damper, which makes the ship trackable by the Terrans' compensator-direction-finders (remember all that babble from Episode 71?) Besides that, all Chellish can do is engage in delaying tactics.

The Terran fleet at Gray Beast immediately mobilizes to catch the deserters. Perry knows that the cruiser's memory banks contain the true coordinates for Earth. Worst-case scenario is that the deserters could somehow reveal that data to their enemies. And it turns out that is precisely their plan. The deserters radio a nearby Arkonide fleet with a proposal to trade the coordinates for asylum, and name the planet Tantalus as a rendezvous point. The Terrans pick up the broadcast, as the deserters knew they would. But the deserters incorrectly assumed that Perry Rhodan couldn't possibly reach Tantalus before the Arkonides. Thanks to Chellish's quick thinking, the Terrans are already hot on the deserters' trail. But it will still be a race to Tantalus ... and some sort of showdown when they arrive ...

Teaser for the next adventure:

The ships of the Robot Regent retreated from Tantalus without a single shot fired, and it looks as if Perry Rhodan has pulled off one more victory against his old rivals from Arkon.
But before the Solar Administrator can concern himself more directly with the Druuf, those attackers from the other time-plane, he must investigate the extent to which the robot brain has built secret bases or placed agents on strange planets.
The expedition of the K-262 to Eppan is a purely routine voyage in the sense of this investigation -- but as the telepath enters the ship, the nameless HORROR comes to him ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Renegades of the Future. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with short stories by Alan J. Wind and Gary Barber, and chapter 5 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman."

97swynn
Modifié : Oct 23, 2018, 4:10 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 74: Das Grauen (= The Horror) / William Voltz
Tagline: A telepath boards the K-262 and with him comes a nameless horror ...
Date: February 1, 1963

The story so far:
Before Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, looks for ways to gain control of the threat posed by the Druuf to all life in the Milky Way, he wants to cover his back.
In other words: Perry Rhodan wants to know whether his old adversary and apparent ally the Robot Regent of Arkon has built secret bases or placed agents on foreign planets which could become dangerous to Earth.
The expedition of the K-262 to Eppan is a purely routine voyage in the sense of this broad-ranging investigation simultaneously carried out by many other teams of the Solar Space Fleet.
But what the men of the K-262 experience is no routine -- it is THE HORROR ...


Marcus Everson and the crew of the K-262 are sent to Eppan, where agent Samy Goldstein watches for evidence of Arkonide activity. Their rendezvous point is an arena where they meet their contact, the native gladiator Mataal. Mataal takes Everson to Samy, who is in such ill health that Everson decides to extract him. Unfortunately Mataal must come too, because he has seen enough to pose an intelligence liability.

Everybody gets back on board the K-262 and take off for safer regions when weird things start happening: an outbreak of nightmares, and then crew members turn up paralyzed one by one like Hogwarts students with a basilisk on the prowl. Worse, two of the ship's engines cut out, leaving them stranded.

With this creepy buildup and the crew sufficiently reduced, the culprit reveals itself to be a "molecule-deformer," a being able to shape physical reality with the power of its mind. It can also control others through telepathy and hypnosis and has ambitious plans for the K-262 and its crew.

Teaser for the next adventure:

This Perry-Rhodan-novel doubtlessly proves in a very impressive way, that as humans advance into the universe they will constantly confront new mysteries and dangers.
The next novel comes from the pen of K.H. Scheer and carries the title, THE RED UNIVERSE.
THE RED UNIVERSE is another Atlan-adventure -- though in contrast to the previous Atlan-volumes the Immortal appears this time as the main character in the middle of exciting events that take off as soon as the special cruiser CALIFORNIA breaks through the blockade at the border of the Druuf universe.


The excellent cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Horror. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a short stories by David Bischoff, and chapter 6 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman." The cover for the English edition has a quote from the Daily Telegraph calling Perry Rhodan "a cosmic Marcus Welby." Which is not a connection I'd ever have made.

98swynn
Oct 24, 2018, 1:52 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 75: Das rote Universum (= The Red Universe) / K. H. Scheer
Tagline: Speed is their best weapon ... the daring deed of the special cruiser CALIFORNIA ... -- the 5th Atlan-adventure!
Date: February 8, 1963

The story so far:
On Earth one writes the year 2043, and thereby nears the time calculated by Perry Rhodan's matematicians, for the beginning of the stabilization of the two time-planes: the universe of the Druuf and Einstein-space, as once now calls the time-plane in which Terra is located.
The Solar Fleet's base on Gray Beast, one a colony world, 6562 light-years from Earth, is on high alert. The space fleet of Terra takes battle stations, Perry Rhodan, Reginald Bull and other leading personalities of the Solar Empire gather to await what is coming to Gray Beast, because this planet lies closest to the gate to the other universe.
Even Atlan, mentor to Earthly humanity, is there as Perry Rhodan develops his clever plans.
Atlan the Arkonide, who already fought against the Druuf 10,000 years ago by Earthly reckoning of time, is nevertheless skeptical as he hears about the planned advance into THE RED UNIVERSE.


As the Terrans carry out preparations on Gray Beast, Arkon also arrives at the overlap-front with a fleet of 30,000 battleships. Earth's modest forces can seriously compete with neither the Druuf nor the Arkonides, so Perry's task is to figure out how to engage with both at minimum risk.

First on his list is to establish a forward base in Druuf space. The cruiser CALIFORNIA crosses into the Red Universe and, after a skirmish with Druuf ships, makes its way to a large system two light-years away from the the overlap zone. The system's 16th planet swarms with Druuf ships and turns out to be the Druuf home planet Druufon. There is no traffic around the 13th planet, however, which is all but tidally locked and consequently barren and inhospitable ... and a promising location for a secret Terran base, to be named Hades. The CALIFORNIA lands and its crew goes about carving out a command station and setting up a matter transmitter/receiver for moving personnel, equipment and supplies.

The matter transmitter leads to an unexpected recon expedition, when Perry, Atlan and Fellmer Lloyd use it to return to Einstein-space and find themselves instead materialized inside a facility on Druufon. Somehow the transmitter signal from Hades was received by a device on Druufon. Excitement ensues with a scramble through the Druuf facility. Just as things seem bleakest, the team receives a telepathic message apologizing personally to Perry Rhodan for the error, and directing them to the transmitter station. This telepathic benefactor saves their lives, but his/her identity remains a mystery.

Teaser for the next adventure:

For the first time, Perry Rhodan has stood face-to-face with his opponents from the foreign time-plane, and thereby stumbled into a situation worse than fatal, which could finally be resolved only by the unexpected intervention of an unknown friend.
Who is this unknown being? Is it a monstrous Druuf who sympathizes with the Terran cause?
You will read more about this in the next Perry-Rhodan novel, written by Clark Darlton: UNDER THE STARS OF DRUUFON.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Crimson Universe. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with a novelette by Robert H. Wilson, and chapter 7 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman."

99swynn
Oct 25, 2018, 4:14 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 76: Unter den Sternen von Druufon (= Under the Stars of Druufon) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Harno, the living television, and Onot, the ghost from the past -- two helpers in extreme danger!
Date: February 15, 1963

The story so far:
For the first time and purely by accident Perry Rhodan has met the mysterious strangers from the other time-plane face-to-face and thereby fell together with his friend Atlan and the mutant Fellmer Lloyd into a more than fatal situation that could only be resulved through the unexpected intervention of a still-unidentified helper.
Perry Rhodan can use all the help he can get, especially now that he has developed a plan to play the Robot Regent of Arkon and the Druuf, whose massive space fleets already engage in fierce battles on the border between the two time-planes, one against the other in order to protect the Solar Empire of humanity from destruction or enslavement.
And in the moment of his return to the fleet's base on Gray Beast, Perry Rhodan remembers an enigmatic being who already supported the Terrans decades ago ...
The Solar Administrator sends this being an invitation to join him in his new undertaking UNDER THE STARS OF DRUUFON ...


The "enigmatic being" of the introduction is Harno, a spherical energy-being encountered back in Episode #37 (post number 23 above). Harno is a telepathic being with a power to display distant events on its surface, hence its nickname "The Living Television." Perry sends Marcus Everson to the Tatlira System to retrieve Harno.

Perry has a formal alliance with Arkon, though he knows that the Robot Regent would destroy Earth if only it knew its location. The next step is to establish an alliance with the Druuf also. Perry takes three ships into the Red Universe, where he finds a skirmish between Druuf and Arkon, then takes the Druuf side by destroying the Arkonide attacker. Having thus established his bonafides, Perry requests and receive permission to land on Druufon.

Perry and team are met by a Druuf delegation who seem open to an alliance, although Gucky can tell that the Druuf only want the alliance to last long enough to defeat Arkon, after which they intend to wipe out Terra as well. Not exactly friendly, but no worse than Arkon. The Druuf pretend to deliberate, but then turn hostile. The Druuf take Perry into custody, intending to torture him for information about Terran weapons systems.

Meanwhile during the charade of negotiations, Gucky and Harno set out to find the telepathic stranger from last week's episode who rescued Perry in the nick of time. The stranger turns out to be a noncorporeal inhabiting the skull of a prominent Druuf scientist Onot. In fact, Onot's remarkable work is mostly due to his ghostly guest rather his own cleverness.

Suspense peaks when Arkon launches a coordinated attack on Druufon. Gucky warns Perry of the attack telepathically, then teleports him from prison. Briefed on the stranger/Onot situation, Perry wants to take Onot along when they leave the planet. But the being in Onot isn't ready just yet for extraction. Perry and team escape without Onot, and Druufon's defenses prove stronger than Arkon's attack force, indicating the Druuf/Arkon conflict is nowhere near resolution.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Harno, as the energy-sphere from the Tatlira System called himself in thoughts to its first Terran friend, has allied himself to Perry Rhodan and Gucky.
The renewed friendship between Harno and the Terrans has alread borne its first fruits.
Harno also plays an important role in the next Perry-Rhodan-novel by Clark Darlton -- just as the "WANDERER IN ETERNITY" ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Under the Stars of Druufon. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 7 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman" ; and part 1 of a translation of "Der Flug nach Eden," a Perry Rhodan story by Clark Darlton and S.J. Byrne that originally appeared in SF Perry Rhodan Magazine in 1979.

100swynn
Modifié : Oct 29, 2018, 10:06 am

 

Perry Rhodan 77: In den Fesseln der Ewigkeit (= In the Chains of Eternity) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: The ghost of an Earthly human -- in the body of a monster from the stars ...
Date: February 22, 1963

The story so far:
The Robot Regent has mobilized the powerful forces of the Arkonide stellar empire!
Thousands of spaceships of all types, mostly crewed by robots, have taken up positions at the "Overlap Zone", i.e., at the border zone between Einstein-space and the Druuf universe.
The battles between the two intergalactic superpowers go back and forth. First the Regent's fleet invades the strange universe, then a Druuf advance achieves a tactical victory in Einstein-space.
Perry Rhodan, the Solar Administrator, plays a double role in this conflict of giants.
How much this double game works out to the advantage or disadvantage of Earth remains to be seen. One thing is already certain, that a being living with the Druuf has engaged with Perry Rhodan's party -- a being IN THE CHAINS OF ETERNITY.


In the previous episode, Perry's team met a mysterious noncorporeal being sharing the body of the Druuf scientist Onot. As they wonder who their ally might be they receive news from Earth, that an alarm has gone off in the tomb of Ernst Ellert.

Backstory: Ernst Ellert. Ellert was one of the earliest members of the Mutant Corps, with the power of "teletemportation," the ability to visit the future spiritually. He died pretty quickly, in a reactor accident in Episode 7. (Actually, the story goes that Clark Darlton killed him off because he thought the character was too powerful.) But Ellert didn't die, exactly: his body retained signs of life, but his consciousness was gone. So back then Perry ordered Ellert's body to be preserved in a monumental tomb, which would protect the body indefinitely from anything short of planetary annihilation and would signal an alarm if Ellert's spirit ever returned. That's the alarm that sounds in this adventure. End backstory.

The team rushes back to Earth, where Ellert's body is still mostly uninhabited. But apparently part of Ellert's consciousness has returned, because it speaks through Atlan and tells Ellert's story since the reactor accident: Ellert's spirit was thrown to the very end of time and then into another time-plane, namely the Red Universe. Ellert now wants to return to Earth, but thinks he can seal the Red Universe off from Einstein-space if he only sticks around Druufon a little longer. He also has concerns about some of the Druufs' research. Some other research he wants to share with Terra, in particular a continuous star drive that can achieve faster-than-light speed without jumping.

After this tete-a-tete with Ellert, Perry returns to the Overlap Front where he meets with the Arkonide forces and proposes a plan to land a robot invasion force on Druufon. But his assistance is duplicitous: on the one hand he assists the Arkons with the invasion, using the matter transmitter on Hades to teleport robots directly to Druufon, where they destroy the planet's central computer; on the other hand he convinces the Druufs he's fighting on their side by discreetly attacking Arkonide ships. Arkon's robot attack scores some points, but the battle goes to the Druuf, when they deploy a secret weapon that destroys all robots in Red Space. This delivers heavy losses to Arkon, but not enough to decide the war, which will still simmer for quite a few episodes to come.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Onot-Ellert, that fantastic union of brutal Druuf body and true human spirit, has given Perry Rhodan useful knowledge during his visit to the Druuf-Universe.
But what good to Perry Rhodan is even all the knowledge in the universe, when his wife Thora meets her fate!
THORA'S SACRIFICE -- that is the title of the next novel in the series, poignant in its human tragedy and greatness.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Bonds of Eternity. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 9 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman" ; and a short story by J. Douglas Burtt.

101styleoflady
Oct 29, 2018, 2:26 am

Cet utilisateur a été supprimé en tant que polluposteur.

102swynn
Modifié : Oct 30, 2018, 1:58 am

 

Perry Rhodan 78: Thoras Opfergang (= Thora's Sacrifice) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Their odds of survival are exactly zero -- by their mission lets them cheat fate ...
Date: March 1, 1963

The story so far:
In spite of repeated efforts Perry Rhodan has not been able to get the cell shower on Planet Wanderer for Crest and Thora. Related experiments yield negative resolts, because the physiotron did not respond to the body impulses of the two Arkonides.
For Thora, Perry Rhodan's wife, an ampule of life-extending serum was retrieved from the galactic physicians' secret laboratory by means of a dangerous mission of John Marshall and Laury Marten, two cosmic agents stationed on the Ara-world Tolimon. (See Perry-Rhodan novels 51 and 52!)
The deterioration process has now begun for the once so beautiful and unapproachably proud Arkonide, leading to the conclusion that the stolen medicine has not achieved its desired effect. In any case it seems that the blood cell collapse leading to the rapid decline of vitality can no longer be stopped -- and in this moment comes THORA'S SACRIFICE.


As described in the teaser, Thora's health is rapidly declining. The drug stolen from Tolimon doesn't seem to be working; in fact, it may have given her an incurable sarcoma. Thora's physicians suggest that Perry send her on a mission, thinking that the activity may revive her flagging strength. Perry has just the thing: he wishes to buy space battleships from Arkon, partly because he needs them and partly to strengthen the shaky Terran/Arkonide alliance. Thora, a high-caste native Arkonide, is the ideal person to lead a diplomatic mission to Arkon.

Thora takes off for Arkon with the telepath Ishy Matsu. But before they reach her home system, Thora is forced down on the ice world Mutral, where they are set upon by Arkonide robot forces. It turns out that Arkon has no interest in trade with Terra, and even less interest in increasing Terra's armament. The Robot Regent just wants to capture someone from whose brain it can extract Earth's coordinates by any means necessary.

A robot battle on an ice planet is exactly as fun as it sounds. (Um, for clarity: it sounds fun and is.) And the excitement even seems to revive Thora exactly as her doctors had hoped. Thora's crew even manage to escape Mutral intact with a couple of Ara prisoners. But just when things seem to be looking up after all, one of the prisoners shoots and kills Thora. Perry soon learns of his wife's death, and promptly returns to Earth for her funeral, where he meets his estranged son Thomas Cardif. He attempts to reconcile with Thomas, but is rebuffed. Cardif has no interest in making peace; his mother's death just adds one more to the grudges he holds against his father.

And really, who can blame him? This episode torqued me off too. In fairness the series has a number of women in its cast besides Thora: the telepaths Ishy Matsu and Laury Marten, the telekinetic Anne Sloan, the telepath/telekinetic Betty Toufry ... but the series doesn't really know what to do them and they spend a lot of time being rescued or nursing the men. Thora on the other hand was easily the most interesting woman character in the cast but the writers had even less of a clue what to do with her, and after she married Perry Rhodan she just dropped from the picture. And now instead of giving her more to do the writers just kill her off. Bastards.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Thora -- once the bitter enemy of the Terrans, later to become the good spirit of the Solar Empire at Perry Rhodan's side -- is now no longer among the living!
That her tragic death leads to an entire series of horrific blows of fate, is seen in the events of the next Perry-Rhodan novel, again masterfully written by Kurt Mahr: THE ATOMIC HELL OF GRAY BEAST.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Thora's Sacrifice. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 10 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman," and short stories by Mike Bunch and Chet Edwards.

103swynn
Modifié : Oct 31, 2018, 1:02 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 79: Die Atomhölle von Gray Beast (= The Atomic Hell of Gray Beast) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: 500,000 men wait in vain for the order to attack! -- Is the Chief dead ... ?
Date: March 8, 1963

The story so far:
Only a few days after the tragic death of his beloved wife, Solar Administrator Perry Rhodan prepares a plan for a lightning attack of the entire Terran space fleet to take out the Arkonide positronic brain, which has proved itself to be Terra's main enemy despite the continuing Druuf threat.
The plan has been worked out to the last detail with the aid of the robotic computer, and fleet units with 500,000 personnel in all committed fighters gather discreetly in a space sector about 500 light-years away from the secret base at Gray Beast (known to readers from Kurt Mahr's colonist-adventures!)
But the order to attack is delayed, for the base itself, where the most important men of the Solar Empire remain, becomes an ATOMIC HELL ...


As Terran forces prepare for a coordinated -- and probably doomed -- attack on Arkon, the technical failure of a characteristic-vibration-damper (see episodes 63 & 71) reveals the coordinates of Gray Beast to Arkon. The Arkonide response is swift and severe: 1,200 heavy Arkonide battleships arrive bombard the planet with atomic fire. Most of the base's personnel are able to escape via transport ships, but Perry, Reginald Bull, Atlan, and Fellmer Lloyd are stuck in an underground bunker. The rest of the adventure follows their escape from the bunker and across the devasted to planet to a place where they can call for help.

Fortunately they are rescued from Gray Beast, unfortunately by an Arkonide space ship with orders to transport them to Arkon. Through subterfuge they are able to transmit a call for help ... but in another case of good news/bad news they are rescued by a Druuf ship.

Teaser for the next adventure:

It seems that with Thora's death a dark age for humanity has begun!
Perry Rhodan, and with him a few of the most important supports of the Solar Empire, are as good as dead -- lost in the embers of the atomic hell of Gray Beast!
But then the gravitation meters on Hades activate and transmit an SOS call from the CAVES OF THE DRUUF ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Atom Hell of Grautier. ("Grautier" is German for "Gray Beast." I think it's cute that the American translation back-translates the name of the planet.)The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 11 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman," and a short story by Raymond Z. Gallun.

104swynn
Modifié : Oct 31, 2018, 2:33 pm

**GERMAN NERDERY**

Idiomatic fun from episode 78:

Man soll den Teufel nicht an die Wand malen.
Literally: "One shouldn't paint the devil on the wall."
What it means: Don't focus on the worst-case scenario. (In this case, implying that speaking of the worst case can make it happen, as in "Speak of the devil ... ")

Sie waren auf Gray Beast vom Regen in die Traufe gekommen."
Literally: "On Gray Beast they'd gone from the rain to the downspout."
You can probably guess that's "Out of the frying pan, into the fire."

105swynn
Modifié : Nov 1, 2018, 1:48 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 80: In den Höhlen der Druuf (= In the Caves of the Druuf) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: The SOS-call comes from the universe of the Druuf -- but only Terrans know Morse code ...
Date: March 15, 1963

The story so far:
It seems as though with Thora's tragic death a gloomy age has dawned for humanity!
Perry Rhodan, and with him a few of the most important supports of the Solar Empire, are as good as dead -- lost in the embers of the atomic hell of Gray Beast!
Solar Marshall Freyt takes over provisional governing power, Marshall Mercant stands beside him with security duty, and General Deringhouse concerns himself with the space fleet. The three men on whom everything in the Solar System depends, hang together.
But the fact that Perry Rhodan probably no longer lives is carefully kept secret from the worldwide public, because the young empire of humanity does not appear strong enough yet for such catastrophic news not to cause serious political tremors.
But how long will the news of such a scope let itself be kept secret ... ?
Or is an emergency call from the CAVES OF THE DRUUF a glimmer of hope ... ?


Last episode's cliffhanger had Perry & company liberated from the Arkonides only to find themselves prisoners of the Druuf. The Druuf bring them to a secure facility in the Red Universe but not to Druufon, which would be too easy to escape. No, the Terrans' prison is Roland, an ammonia-methane gas giant with gravity almost twice Earth's. The Druuf maintain an underground facility on Roland, with Earth-normal gravity provided by artificial generators, and breathable atmosphere only in certain rooms. The Terrans of course are not provided with environment suits, so to escape they would have to deal with both the crushing gravity and the toxic atmosphere. Escape is impossible.

So of course it's an escape adventure. The spoilery details are that they manipulate the artificial gravity generators to send an SOS call requesting a pick-up. For the environment suits they, mm, commandeer the necessary equipment from their Druuf guards. And as for the gravity: they deal with it.

Meanwhile, rumors inevitably leak that Perry Rhodan was killed in the assault on Gray Beast. His estranged son Thomas Cardif loses no time in demanding that the power of Solar Administrator be conferred onto him. Rhodan and company return just in time to interrupt Cardif's power grab and cashier him. Not to imply we've heard the last of him. We haven't.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The political unrest introduced on Earth, brought about through the false reports of Perry Rhodan's death, subsides now as the Administrator returns to the home planet after his adventurous and dramatic rescue from the caves of the Druuf.
In volume 81 the lead role is not played by Perry Rhodan, but rather the Administrator's very good friend: the mouse-beaver Gucky, for he discovers THE SPACESHIP OF THE ANCESTORS!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Caves of the Druufs. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 12 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman," and a short story by Frank Belknap Long.

106swynn
Modifié : Nov 3, 2018, 8:59 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 81: Raumschiff der Ahnen (= Spaceship of the Ancestors) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Humans as servants of machines -- on the ghost ship from the past
Date: March 22, 1963

The story so far:
For millennia a spaceship has moved through space, far from well-traveled space routes.
The ship is gigantic, for it has the same diameter as the superbattleships of the Arkonide fleet, and yet it is -- compared to the breadth of space -- not more than a speck of dust.
Until now nobody has located the ship -- undisturbed it has made its was as ever past solar systems populated and unpopulated, past dead planets, past planets where life has not begun to develop …
And the spaceship itself …? Does it carry a crew at all, or is it a flying coffin, a leftover witness to a space tragedy that happened before humanity yet knew that a universe exists ...?
The mouse-beaver Gucky, the most able mutant from Perry Rhodan's special unit, "locates" the ship through pure chance -- and claims that somebody "thought loud" …


The ship mentioned in the introduction is a generation ship populated by Arkonides. Details of the voyage are managed by robotic crew, and passengers are no longer even aware of their original mission or even that their world is in fact a vehicle. Passengers spend their days following the robots' orders until the day the robots arrive to recycle them. But not all passengers are content with this state of affairs, and a small number plan a revolt against the robots. Unknown to the passengers, those taken for recycling do not actually die; they are put in cryogenic sleep and stored in a vault in the ship's interior. During his cryogenic processing one of the passengers sends out a mental cry for help; and though he doesn't know what he is doing this thought is picked up by Gucky.

Gucky arrives on the ship to find a revolt in progress. He assists the rebels as they take over the ship's command center. They learn that the ship's original mission is long forgotten. The robots have long since taken over, and intend to take the ship and its refrigerated cargo to some planet where they can establish a robot colony with Arkonide slaves. Gucky helps the Arkonides set up their own crew and puts them on a path to a nearby habitable planet.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Gucky, whose dislike for robots is well known, has again established clear relations through his visit to the SPACESHIP OF THE ANCESTORS, and "in play" ensured that people do not remain the servants of machines!
In Perry Rhodan volume 82 however, Julian Tifflor is the main character.
Julian Tifflor, the "cosmic decoy," places the UNIVERSE IN CHECK.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Spaceship of Ancestors. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 13 of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman," and a short story by Ray Cummings.

107swynn
Nov 5, 2018, 2:24 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 82: Schach dem Universum (= Universe in Check) / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: The space battle on the overlap-front -- a new coup for the "cosmic decoy" ...
Date: March 29, 1963

The story so far:
After Perry Rhodan's fortunate return from Druuf captivity, the political situation in the Solar System has once again stabilized.
But for understandable reasons it no longer seems advisable to seek an alliance with the Druuf, though they are also opponents of Arkon's regent.
A plan is offered to those responsible for the continuation of the Solar Empire: a plan that could decidedly weaken both great rivals in the battle for control of the Galaxy!
This plan demands a new mission for the "cosmic decoy" -- and Julian Tifflor, kept young through the cell-shower on Wanderer like other leading personalities of the Solar Empire, does not hesitate to place THE UNIVERSE IN CHECK ...


The plan is to have a small group led by Julian Tifflor stage their own desertion and flee into Red Space where they would hope to defect to Druufon. Meanwhile, Perry tips the Robot Regent that of his men have deserted and he'd appreciate any help in recapturing them. The idea is to lure the Arkonides into Red Space, where the Druufs can attack.

The plan proceeds even more smoothly than expected. Tifflor's team stumbles across a battle between a Druuf ship and Arkonide attackers. Tiff take the Druffs' side and gains their trust by destroying Arkon's ships. In consideration of his assistance -- and the hard reality of the Terrans' superior Einstein-Universe speed -- the Druufs offer Tiff command over a fleet of 14,000 battleships. Meanwhile the Arkonides follow Tifflor to Red Space, hoping to capture him and extract Earth's coordinates from his brain.

Tiff accepts the job, of course, and wastes no time in provoking a fight. Space battles ensue. It's a lot of fun: ships blow up right and left. Tifflor's team is left with the problem of how to escape alive out of a battle designed for maximum destruction.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The "cosmic decoy" has once again fulfilled his assignment -- the assignment to weaken the two great opponents of the Solar Empire.
But how strong Arkon's Robot Regent remains in spite of everything, and how many times more powerful than the Solar force -- that will be laid out impressively and dramatically by Kurt Brand in the next Perry-Rhodan adventure. So in just a few days: "Hello, Topsid, please respond!" (Volume 83).


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Checkmate: Universe. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with the concluding chapter of William B. Ellern's "New Lensman," and a short story by Oliver Saari.

108swynn
Modifié : Nov 10, 2018, 1:13 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 83: Hallo Topsid, bitte melden! (= Hello Topsid, Please Respond!) / Kurt bRAND
Tagline: The KUBLAI_KHAN and the secret Mutant Corps on a mission to prevent catastrophe -- it is a matter of seconds!
Date: April 5, 1963

The story so far:
The new year has begun. Everywhere humans can be found -- whether on the farthest outposts of the Solar System, on colony worlds, or on the good old Earth itself -- one celebrates after the old merry custom and with the appropriate cry at the change of year.
Only a few suspect that the year 2044, that is greeted everywhere so joyfully, will be a fateful year for humanity -- a year that will bring decisions one way or another.
The power-political situation in the Milky Way is confused. The Solar Realm, tiny in relation to the Arkonide Empire and the Druuf power-block, stands with fire on both sides.
A spark would suffice to ignite the fire of war in the Solar System too!
And this igniting spark has already glowed for 73 years -- in the home system of the Topsiders ...


Despite Julian Tifflor's efforts in the last adventure, Arkon's forces remain powerful enough to overwhelm Earth. For now the Druuf threat is sufficient to keep Arkon engaged, but Terran mathematicians have calculated that in just a few months the overlap-front between the Red Universe and the Einstein Universe will become unstable, effectively removing the Druuf as a buffer. When that happens, the only thing standing between Earth and destruction is the fact that despite its best efforts Arkon still doesn't know where to find Earth. As Perry and Reginald Bull contemplate this situation they realize that Arkon already has the information it needs and just doesn't know it yet. And the explanation comes from early in the series ...

Way back in Episode 1 Perry Rhodan's team discovered an Arkonide ship stranded on the moon. The ship had sent out an emergency signal, to which several hostile aliens had responded. Among them were Topsiders, who mistriangulated the symbol and (in Episode 10) attacked the nearby Vega System instead of the Solar System by mistake. Perry's sudden insight is that the Topsiders almost certainly have stored the original data about the Arkonide emergency signal, and know that the Terrans participated in Vega's defense. This is worrisome because Arkon is now supplementing its robot crews with impressed crew from member worlds -- and Topsid is a member world (albeit a discontented one). It would be no great coincidence for Topsiders on an Arkonide ship to realize the "Rhodan" they seek could be the same as the "Rhodan" they fought 70 years ago.

Perry's solution is characteristically elaborate. He wants to destroy all documents related to the Topsider attack on Vega; and to adjust the memories of any survivors. To that end, he will wrap Topsid in a disruption field that prevents any off-planet communication. Then a Terran team lands on Topsid in the ship KUBLAI KHAN, pretending to be agents of the Robot Regent. They will ask to meet any veterans of the Vegan conflict, whose memories will be adjusted by psychics of the Mutant Corps. Meanwhile, another group will travel clandestinely to the research station where the Arkonide emergency signal was originally received and adjust or destroy records there.

But when the team reaches Topsid they find the plan complicated by the fact that the Arkonides are already there and have begun recruiting ....

Teaser for the next adventure:

Many men of the Solar fleet have fallen, and the KUBLAI KHAN, a giant ship whose construction had required sixteen years, has been destroyed!
But they have completed their assignment, which led them into the Hell of Topsid, and removed the last starting point for an accidental discovery of Earth!
To remove the basic problem, that is Arkon's relentless Robot Regent, will become the next assignment of the specialists of the Solar Fleet and the mutants.
They begin the journey, disguised as RECRUITS FOR ARKON ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Planet Topide, Please Reply!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with the opening chapter of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Smile."

109swynn
Modifié : Nov 10, 2018, 6:16 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 84: Rekruten für Arkon (= Recruits for Arkon) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: A modern Trojan horse, conceived on Terra, built on Zalit -- and on the way to Arkon!
Date: April 12, 1963

The story so far:
The KUBLAI KHAN, that super-spaceship whose construction took the Terrans 16 years, has turned into a rain of fire over Topsid -- but the assignment which had to be completed by the men of KUBLAI KHAN, was completed and the danger averted that the Robot Regent could learn the galactic position of Earth from the documents of the lizard people.
Now as Crest, the old Arkonide who belonged with Thora to the crew of the moon-stranded Arkonide research ship, claims that his early forbears could not have failed to equip the Robot Regent with a security switch, Perry Rhodan has a plan!


Of *course* Perry Rhodan has a plan, of *course* it involves disguise and subterfuge, and of *course* it's the sort of long shot that would work only in a pulpy science fiction story. Because that's what we're here for, right?

The Arkonides are actively recruiting personnel to supplement the robotic crews of their battleships, and are going around to their colony worlds to seek recruits. An undercover agent on the planet Zalit reports that the Arkonide recruitment forces have arrived, and Perry sees his chance. The Zaliters are sufficiently humanlike that Perry thinks he can disguise a force of 150 Terrans as Zaliters and sign up to join Arkon's fleet. The Terran forces make contact with resistance groups on Zalit, and take over rebels' identities leaving the rebels free to continue their work. Meanwhile, Perry has Gucky kidnap the planet's military administrator and replace him with mutant Roger Osega. Osega must assume a role of ruthless administrator, while secretly assisting Perry's plot and the resistance's efforts.

Teaser for the next adventure:

They became RECRUITS FOR ARKON, cannon fodder for the Robot Regent, because the defensive battles against the Druuf have proven that living beings make better fighters than soulless, stubborn machines.
The Regent does not hesitate to take this insight and draw his own conclusions from cold logic.
BATTLE SCHOOL NAATOR is the title of the next Perry-Rhodan-novel (volume 85), in which the further adventures of the RECRUITS FOR ARKON are portrayed by Clark Darlton.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Recruits for Arkon. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with chapter 2 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and James Causey's short story, "Inferiority."

110swynn
Modifié : Nov 11, 2018, 9:44 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 85: Kampfschule Naator (= Battle School Naator) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Their masks are outstanding -- but a body can betray everything!
Date: April 19, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan's descovery of an Arkonide spaceship stranded on the Moon, gave the impetus for a political union of humanity and laid the foundation for the Solar Empire, Terra's stellar realm.
That this realm -- tiny when compared the the many other powers of the universe -- survives at all, rather than passing into atomic destruction or being demoted to an Arkonide colony world, is thanks to the Terrans surrounding Perry Rhodan and their clever moves in the galactic game -- and the luck that in the long run belongs only to the capable ...
Trusting in this luck, Perry Rhodan developed a clever plan to use a Terran battle group and advance to his greatest adversary, the Robot Regent of Arkon!
But before the RECRUITS FOR ARKON -- for as such have the Terran specialists applied on the planet Zalit -- can get close enough to the robot brain to carry out their work of destruction -- the BATTLE SCHOOL NAATOR awaits them ...


In the last episode Perry succeeded in enlisting 150 Terrans, disguised as Zaliters, in the Arkonide fleet. Despite their disguises, there exist biological differences between Zaliters and Terrans, and a close examination will blow their cover. Problem is, that sort of examination is routine at their next step, training at the battle-school on Planet Naator. Among the Terrans are psychic mutants tasked with preventing the Arkonides from examining the Terrans too closely -- or from realizing what they see, if they do.

But events back on Zalit also jeapordize their cover, where Terran Roger Osega has been impersonating the planetary administrator. Osega is assassinated by a Zaliter rebel unaware of Osega's true identity. Osega's robot bodyguards quickly eliminate the rebel, but it is too late: the Arkonides have Osega's body and put it on a fast ship back to Arkon for an autopsy -- an autopsy that will surely will prove that Osega is no Arkonide and that the Terrans are up to something. Gucky must intervene before that happens.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Thanks to the mutants, the "Recruits for Arkon" have avoided or rendered harmless passed all of the security measures of the Robot Regent, to whom Perry Rhodan's methods are no longer unknown.
Still, the battle-group's fate hangs by a silken thread, for the body of the Terran sergeant, who functioned as an Arkonide admiral, would have betrayed them all had it been brought to headquarters ...
The next Perry-Rhodan-novel (volume 86) tells how the "Recruits" make it to Arkon, and what awaits them there!
The novel carries the title, THE KEY TO POWER.
But who holds the "key to power" in his hands, we will not yet tell you, dear friends of Perry Rhodan.
In any case it turns out differently than many of you might think ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Conflict Center: Naator. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 3 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and David R. Daniels's short story, "The Far Way."

111swynn
Déc 1, 2018, 1:50 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 86: Der Schlüssel zur Macht (= The Key to Power) / K.H. Scheer
Tagline: They come as destroyers -- and don't know that their strategy is pointless ...
Date: April 26, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan's discovery of an Arkonide spaceship stranded on the Moon, gave the impetus for a political union of humanity and laid the foundation for the Solar Empire, Terra's stellar realm.
That this realm -- tiny compared to the many other powers of the universe -- survives at all, rather than passing into atomic destruction or being demoted to an Arkonide colony world, is thanks to the Terrans surrounding Perry Rhodan and their clever moves in the galactic game -- and the luck that in the long run belongs only to the capable ...
Trusting in this luck, Perry Rhodan developed a clever plan to use a Terran battle group and advance to his greatest adversary, the Robot Regent of Arkon!
After many difficulties the "Recruits for Arkon" -- for so the Terran specialists advertised themselves when they had established themselves on the Zaliters' planet -- have reached the neighborhood of the Robot Brain.
But the last leg of their dangerous path is also the hardest!
Just before reaching the desired goal Perry Rhodan falls into deepest despair, for the key to power belongs to another ...


Perry Rhodan, Atlan, and a Terran task force disguised as Zaliter recruits have finally reached Arkon III, home to Arkon's military-industrial complex and the Robot Regent. Their initial plan is to find and destroy the Regent's power source, which turns out to be too well-protected. Perry decides the only alternative is to explode an Arkon bomb, which would destroy the Robot Regent beyond repair.

This alternative plan concerns Atlan. He doesn't like the idea of robot's being in charge and he doesn't want it to destroy his new friends. He supports temporarily disabling the Regent for adjustments to its programming, but Arkon's infrastructure depends on automation and its defenses depends on robotic troops, all of which are managed by the robot brain. The new plan would mean the end of Arkon and chaos for the region. Perry is unmoved by Atlan's arguments and goes ahead with the plan.

Meanwhile, Arkon has figured out that saboteurs have infiltrated the Zaliter recruits. They discover and disable the Terrans' bomb before it detonates, and deploy combat robots to bring the Zaliter recruits under control. The Terrans fight back, but their case is hopeless.

Desperate, Atlan announces his identity to the Robot Regent. The Regent recognizes Atlan as a pure-race (reinrassig and no it doesn't sound less creepy auf Deutsch) Arkonide "with power in his gaze and spirit and is capable as the old ones and animated with the best will for the future of the great empire." It surrenders the Imperatorship to Atlan, and reduces itself to day-to-day management duties.

Atlan accepts the Imperatorship, and quickly patches things up with Perry ... despite the fact that Perry was just trying to demolish the very empire Atlan is now sworn to protect. It would have been more interesting for the tension to develop, but friendship is nice I guess.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The brain-waves that prove Atlan the Undying as an undegenerate Arkonide of high spiritual qualities allowed the otherwaise unassailable Robot Regent to activate a security circuit that granted Atlan himself all governing power over the Arkonide Empire.
Perry Rhodan can only hope that Atlan, who attempted for millennia to steer the development of Terrans to his own advantage, will continue to prove himself a friend to humanity ...
The next novel is titled "The Sleepers of ISC" and comes from the pen of William Voltz.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Power Key. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 4 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and S.C. Smith's short story, "Race."

112swynn
Modifié : Déc 4, 2018, 12:45 am

 

Perry Rhodan 87: Die Schläfer der ISC (= The Sleepers of the ISC) / William Voltz
Tagline: They promised a happy future -- but they planned to betray humanity ...
Date: May 3, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan's discovery of an Arkonide spaceship stranded on the Moon, gave the impetus for a political union of humanity and laid the foundation for the Solar Empire, Terra's stellar realm.
That this realm -- tiny compared to the many other powers of the universe -- survives at all, rather than passing into atomic destruction or being demoted to an Arkonide colony world, is thanks to the Terrans surrounding Perry Rhodan and their clever moves in the galactic game -- and the luck that in the long run only the capable have ...
Building on this luck, Perry Rhodan introduced his commando undertaking, "Recruits for Arkon" and led it to a successful end -- although to a different end than the one he had dreamed for himself, for finally it was not he, Perry Rhodan, but rather Atlan the Arkonide to whom the great heritage fell.
"Fortune" or "accident" -- who knows which? -- also plays a deciding role in the discovery of what lies behind the SLEEPERS OF THE ISC ...


Down-on-his-luck businessman Maurice Dunbee sees no clear way out of his financial difficulties, so he contracts with the Intertime Sleeping Corporation (ISC) to go into hibernation for 300 years. Dunbee leaves a message for his wife, then disappears into offices of the ISC. When Dunbee's wife discovers his note, she hires private detective Richard Kennock to infiltrate the ISC and rescue her husband if possible.

Kennock was once a member of the Solar Defense, and has long had suspicions about the ISC's operation. He calls a contact at the Solar Defense who supplies him with communication equipment and a "minideflector" which should make him invisible for sneaking into restricted areas at the ISC. What Kennock discovers is shocking: the ISC is facilitating a Druuf invasion of Earth! The ISC's clients are transmitted to the Red Universe; to replace the clients the ISC receives Druufs in human disguise. (There's some technical nonsense about the transmissions needing to have balanced mass.) The ISC's hibernation units are full of disguised Druuf waiting for sufficient numbers to subdue Earth.

Teaser for the next adventure:

"Sleepers" do not seem to be a practical way to conquer a world -- that may be the moral of the novel that you, dear Perry Rhodan Friends, have just finished reading ...
World conquest is also commonly sought by other means -- such as in THE COLUMBUS EVENT, the next exciting Perry Rhodan (volume 88), that K.H. Scheer has written for you!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Sleepers. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 5 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and short stories by Paul Dellinger and Clifton B. Kruse.

113swynn
Modifié : Déc 6, 2018, 5:50 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 88: Der Fall Kolumbus (= The Columbus Event) / K.H. Scheer
Tagline: A radio message brings destruction -- and the battle for Earth ignites ...
Date: May 10, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan's discovery of an Arkonide spaceship stranded on the Moon, gave the impetus for a political union of humanity and laid the foundation for the Solar Empire, Terra's stellar realm.
That this realm -- tiny compared to the many other powers of the universe -- survives at all, rather than passing into atomic destruction or being demoted to an Arkonide colony world, is thanks to the Terrans surrounding Perry Rhodan and their clever moves in the galactic game -- and the luck that in the long run only the capable have ...
But the downright fantastic streak of luck that Perry Rhodan has experienced so far in his efforts to disguise the galactic position of the Solar System, appears to near its end.
Humanity's Solar Empire has already in recent times suffered a good number of heavy setbacks, even if THE COLUMBUS EVENT has not yet happened ...
Now it is time -- and the question arises, whether the young stellar realm of humanity is strong enough to withstand a direct attack ...


In the last episode the Terrans thwarted a secret invasion of Earth by Druufs. Though the invasion was unsuccessful, the Druufs did gather enough information to learn Earth's approximate galactic position. Now they've opened a portal between Red Space and Einstein Space, just a few light-years away from the Solar System. Druuf ships start coming through and pick up a radio signal from a nearby passenger ship. This additional clue leads them right to the Solar System. Perry Rhodan mobilizes the Terran Fleet and meets the Druufs at the edge of the Solar System. Terran ships are faster, better crewed, and have superior weapons, but the Druufs have the advantage of numbers, and slowly push closer to Earth.

Rhodan sends Atlan a message requesting help. But he know that Atlan is in a precarious position, having only just become Emperor; rushing to the aid of Arkon's recent enemy would not be good politics. Not expecting help from that quarter, he sends Julian Tifflor and a small team of the Mutant Corps into the Red Universe to find some way to cut off the flow of Druuf warships. Tiff & team sneak into Red Space and telepathically contact Ernst Ellert, who is still hanging out on the Druuf homeworld. Ellert advises Tiff that the portal is artificially generated, and he directs them to the station responsible. Two Mutant teleporters, Ras Tschubai and Tako Kakuta take bombs onto the station and destroy it.

With the station destroyed, the portal closes, and the stream of Druuf ships into Einstein space is cut off. But there are already sufficiently many ships to threaten Earth. Perry and the Terran fleet fight off the invaders as long as they can, and at the last moment Atlan arrives with Arkonide and Springer battleships. These reinforcements are sufficient to defeat the Druufs, but at the cost of revealing the long-kept secret of Earth's location.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The Battle for Terra is finished, in which Julian Tifflor's desperate push into the Druuf Universe proved to be a last-minute rescue.
But despite the victorious battle, the Solar System's galactic position is now common knowledge -- and that represents for Perry Rhodan, the Administrator of the Solar Empire, the most dangerous situation of his career so far!
GUCKY'S GREAT HOUR begins, as Perry Rhodan's bitterest hour strikes!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Columbus Affair. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 6 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and John Russell Fearn's short story, "It Came From Outer Space."

114swynn
Modifié : Déc 9, 2018, 12:46 am

 

Perry Rhodan 89: Guckys große Stunde (= Gucky's Great Hour) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: A son betrays his father -- and a galactic merchant sees his great hour arrive ...
Date: May 17, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan's discovery of an Arkonide spaceship stranded on the Moon, gave the impetus for a political union of humanity and laid the foundation for the Solar Empire, Terra's stellar realm.
That this realm -- tiny compared to the many other powers of the universe -- survives at all, rather than passing into atomic destruction or being demoted to an Arkonide colony world, is thanks to the Terrans surrounding Perry Rhodan and their clever moves in the galactic game -- and the luck that in the long run only the capable have.
But even the longest streaks of good luck eventually reach their end -- and that which Solar Administrator Perry Rhodan and his people have so long prevented, has now unfortunately occurred: the galactic position of the Solar System is no longer a mystery, as the "Columbus Event" definitvely showed!
The attack of the powerful Druuf-fleet could be deflected by the mobilization of Arkonide power, but the request for Arkonide aid had the result that the greedy galactic merchants found their way into the Solar System.
With the arrival of Cokaze, the merchants' richest patriarch, difficulties of internal politics also begin for Perry Rhodan ...
But as Perry Rhodan's bitterest hour strikes, GUCKY'S GREAT HOUR begins ...


Perry Rhodan has fought off invasion by a Druuf fleet, but only with help from Arkon. Perry has little concern about the Arkonide forces, now under Atlan's command, However, the Arkonide forces arrived with Springer battleships too, and Perry's trust of Springers is low. His suspicions seem confirmed when the Springers refuse to leave the Solar System after the battle is won.

The Springer clan chief Cokaze expects a monopoly on trade. Perry refuses, of course, but his estranged son Thomas Cardif reaches out to Cokaze and promises the monopoly on the condition that Cokaze help him bring Perry Rhodan down and promote Cardif in his place. This arrangement is acceptable to Cokaze, who launches a propaganda campaign to undermine Perry's reputation. The campaign focuses on Perry's alleged mistreatment of his wife Thora in her final days, claims which Perry cannot deal with dispassionately. Eventually, Perry releases a recording of Thora's funeral, which contradicts the claims.

While Perry deals with the political and personal crisis, Gucky takes matters into his own hands: he teleports to Cokaze's ship where he finds Thomas Cardif hanging out. Gucky spies telepathically to learn Cokaze's plans -- which alarmingly involve violent attacks within the Solar System to undermine public confidence in Rhodan. The plan is to drop fusion bombs on Earth, Mars and Venus, a plan Gucky thwarts by teleporting Cokaze's entire store of fusion detonators outside the ship, where they explode harmlessly in space.

Meanwhile, Cokaze interrogates some Terran prisoners and learns about Atlan's recent ascent to emperor of Arkon. It occurs to him that the political situation on Arkon is fragile, offering a unique opportunity into a vastly profitable market. With a few skirmishes, Cokaze leaves the Solar System for richer fields.

Teaser for the next adventure:

In order to help Perry Rhodan, his admired friend in great need, Gucky the mouse-beaver dared to make a great jump to Venus and defuse the bombs that were intended to create chaos in the Solar System and help Cokaze's clan to greater riches.
The Springer Fleet finally had to leave the Solar System, but shortly before their departure their leader learned something the would have bitter consequences for Atlan, the new leader of the Arkonide realm ...
ATLAN IN DANGER, that is the title of the next Perry-Rhodan novel, also composed by Kurt Brand!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Pucky's Greatest Hour. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 7 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and short stories by Henry Andrew Ackerman and Michael R. Farkash.

115swynn
Modifié : Déc 8, 2018, 10:09 pm

GERMAN NERDERY

Gucky, der jeden duzte und nicht einmal von Rhodan Respekt zu haben schien, schlich sich in dem nächsten freien Sessel.

Literally: Gucky, who said "you" to everyone and seemed to have no respect even for Rhodan, sneaked into the next free chair.

Anyway: like many other languages, German has formal and informal terms of address. When speaking to your mother you say, "du"; when speaking to your professor you say "Sie". Teachers address young students with "du," and older students with "Sie." When I was an exchange student, and at the Gymnasium I attended, the switch was made in 11th grade per school policy.

This is a big deal, and there are verbs for using either case: duzen for using the informal pronoun, and siezen for using the formal pronoun. That's what we see here: "Gucky duzte jeden" = "Gucky said 'du' to everybody." The series frequently mentions that Gucky says "du" to everyone, even Perry Rhodan. Which is puzzling, because the series also frequently reminds us that Perry Rhodan is an American and usually speaks English.

When I was in Germany I frequently heard the story of how (German Chancellor) Helmut Kohl in a meeting once said to (American President) Ronald Reagan, "You can say 'you' to me." Google now tells me that the story may be apocryphal, since there is no official record of the gaffe and the same story has since been told about Chancellors Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel and their American counterparts. (Well, I didn't see any stories about Merkel saying it to Trump. Because after all why would she? One says it to people one likes.)

Curiously, the stories seem always to involve American politicians and not leaders of other English-speaking nations.

116swynn
Modifié : Déc 9, 2018, 1:55 am

 

Perry Rhodan 90: Atlan in Not (= Atlan in Danger) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: His hate knows no bounds -- and form him the revolt against Arkon is only a means to an end ...
Date: May 24, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
The most dangerous through to humanity thus far, which culminated in the "Battle of Terra," was thwarted with the help of Arkon,just as the domestic political dangers provoked by Thomas Cardif could only be thwarted by Gucky's solo action.
The Springer Fleet has pulled out of the Solar System, and Perry Rhodan has again achieved a bloodless victory, but in the meantime the Arkon-Realm led by Atlan the Undying has fallen into extreme danger as it becomes known through the galaxy that the mercilessly agressive Robot Regent, who had been ruling til now, was no longer giving orders!

ATLAN is IN DANGER -- and Perry Rhodan must intervene!


Following last episode's events, Cokaze and Thomas Cardif withdraw to the Springer home planet Archetz, where they spread the news
that the Robot Regent no longer rules Arkon. They contact Ortece, director of the Springer Bank, who manipulates interest rates.
Provoked by the political news and the economic hardship, revolts break out across the Arkonide Empire. Atlan recognizes the threat
and contacts Perry Rhodan for assistance.

Rhodan, meanwhile, becomes aware of a fleet of 3,000 Druuf ships who fled the Battle of Terra but who weren't able to return to Red Space.
He puts together a research team to develop a detector for the Druuf linear drive. With the new detector he locates and contacts the
Druuf ships and promises them help to return home, in exchange for a small favor: on their way out, they should stop by Archetz and
put a scare into the Springers. But the Druufs violate the agreement and attack Archetz, devastating Springer population and resources.
The Druufs can only be stopped by an Arkonide robot fleet. As news of this action spreads, rebels are convinced that allegiance to
Arkon remains necessary for protection against the Druuf threat.

Teaser for the next adventure:

For Thomas Cardif the revolt against Atlan is just a means to an end -- to the end of toppling his father Perry Rhodan!
The attack he had prepared to the smallest detail has failed, but has already demonstrated that Perry Rhodan's son will not throw in the towel so easily ...
But the next Perry-Rhodan novel, written by Clark Darlton, addresses a different theme, as the title ERNST ELLERT'S RETURN indicates!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Atlan in Danger. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 8 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and the short story, "Inferiority" by James Causey.

117swynn
Modifié : Déc 9, 2018, 2:03 am

GERMAN NERDERY

The phrase I translated above as "throw in the towel" is literally "throw the shotgun in the grain" ("die Flinte ins Korn werfen")

... dass Perry Rhodans Sohn die Flinte nicht so leicht ins Korn wirft ...

Literally: ... that Perry Rhodan's son will not throw the shotgun in the grain so easily ...

118swynn
Modifié : Déc 10, 2018, 1:34 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 91: Ernst Ellerts Rückkehr (= Ernst Ellert's Return) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: Ghost don't let themselves be captured! -- Onot-Elert before the high judge of Druufon!...
Date: May 31, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
The most dangerous threat to humanity thus far, which culminated in the "Battle of Terra," was thwarted with the help of Arkon,just as the domestic political dangers provoked by Thomas Cardif could only be thwarted by Gucky's solo action.
Humanity can further develop peacefully only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself -- and so far that seems a long way to go ...
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
And so in early August of the year 2044, Perry Rhodan is on Arkon III, when he receives an emergency call from Terra. Marschall Freyt is on the telecom. He relates news about Hades, the secret Terran base in the Druuf Universe.
It is about ERNST ELLERT'S RETURN!


Quick recap: Ernst Ellert was a Mutant Corps agent who through a series of plot developments came unattached from his body and landed in the head of the Druuf scientist Onot. With Ellert's help, Onot has become a chief scientist among the Druuf but recently Ellert has also been working against the Druuf, most recently in helping thwart the Druuf invasion of Earth. Druuf authorities have finally caught on to the fact that Onot has sabotaged their plans and bring him to trial. Ellert has no intention of doing time with Onot, especially now that the overlap between Red Space and Einstein Space is deteriorating. If Ellert wants to get back home, now is the time. Ellert sends an emergency call to Hades, where agents alert Perry Rhodan. Perry speeds to Hades in the DRUSUS, with Ellert's preserved body on board. Also Gucky.

The rest of the adventure follows Ellert/Onot's escape from Druufon. With Gucky's help, they are able to escape a variety of traps and flee the planet for Hades, Druuf authorities close behind. Eventually they make it safely to the DRUSUS and flee Red Space in the nick of time, as the Druufs destroy Hades behind them. Ellert is reunited with his body, unfortunately losing his ability to "teletemport."

Teaser for the next adventure:

Ernst Ellert, the so-called teletemporter, who joined the newly-founded Mutant Corps in the early days of the Third Power, and whose spirit was forced into an near-endless journey through time and space, has returned and brought with him revolutionary scientific-technical knowledge.
William Voltz's novel next week turns to another theme that was raised in volume 74 (THE HORROR).
SECRET MISSION MOLUK (Perry-Rhodan novel 92) shows the exciting search for more molecular transformers!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Ernst Ellert Returns!. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 9 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and the short story, "A Scientist Rises" by Harry Bates and Desmond Hall.

119swynn
Déc 10, 2018, 1:27 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 92: Geheimmission Moluk (= Secret Mission Moluk / William Voltz
Tagline: Castaway Terrans experience the terror of the Moluk-desert -- 20,000 light years from home ...
Date: June 7, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
The most dangerous threat to humanity thus far, which culminated in the "Battle of Terra," was thwarted with the help of Arkon,just as the domestic political dangers provoked by Thomas Cardif could only be thwarted by Gucky's solo action.
Humanity can further develop peacefully only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself -- and so far that seems a long way to go ...
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
Atlan and Perry Rhodan are true friends and allies!
But Perry Rhodan knows that with the current power relationships in the Milky Way, it can only be advantageous to have even more allies.
Therefore he orders the light cruiser MEXICO to launch SECRET MISSION MOLUK!


Back in episode 74 ("Das Grauen"), Marcus Everson and the crew of the FAUNA encountered and barely escaped an encounter with a "molecule-deformer," a creature able to reshape physical reality with the power of its mind. With the lingering threat of the Druufs, and the persistent threat of the Springers, Perry Rhodan feels that a friendly molecule-deformer could be a valuable ally. And though that first meeting didn't go well he thinks it's worth the risk to reach out to another one. If he can find one.

When the Solar Defense force discovers evidence of a molecule-deformer's spacecraft on planet Moluk, Perry assembles a team led by veterans of episode 74: Marcus Everson and Samy Goldstein. Everson is careful to observe the planet for 48 hours before attempting a landing. Despite his care, the ship malfunctions on descent, and the Terran team is stranded in a desert region. Near the crash site they find a small city of green-skinned humanoids (whom they name "Greens") who seem to have a psychic power to suppress psychic powers. After initial misunderstandings, the team establishes friendly relations with the Greens and convince one of their leaders, Napoleon, to guide them as they explore the city's surroundings.

The team gets lost in a sandstorm, then stumbles upon a mysterious building that turns out to be the crashed remains of the molecule-deformer's spaceship. There Napoleon announces that he is in fact a molecule-deformer, the last survivor of the crash. In fact he is the last of his race, since the passengers on the vessel were the last molecule-deformers, looking for a new home. Though there will never be a molecule-deformer colony, Napoleon has no intention of spending the rest of his life on Moluk.

Napoleon led the Terrrans away from the city and into the desert in order to get away from the Greens' psychic-suppressing powers. Now that he is outside their influence he intends to take control of the Terrans' minds and use their ship to escape Moluk. And he very nearly does it too, but fails thanks to the timely interference of another Green friend and the sharpshooting skills of robot crew.

Teaser for the next adventure:

SECRET MISSION MOLUK was a failure, for the beings who Perry wanted to make his allies no longer exist.
The next adventure is based on the mutual assistance pact with Atlan, the new Emperor of Arkon, and the police action of a Terran space ship against the ENEMY IN DARKNESS.
THE ENEMY IN DARKNESS, that is the title of the next Perry-Rhodan adventure, written by Kurt Mahr, which takes place a water planet!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Secret Mission: Moluk. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 10 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and the short story, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar" by Francis Stevens.

120swynn
Modifié : Déc 16, 2018, 9:26 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 93: Der Feind im Dunkel (= The Enemy in Darkness / Kurt Mahr
Tagline: A robot dies -- and its death sparks and interstellar police action ...
Date: June 14, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
The most dangerous threat to humanity thus far, which culminated in the "Battle of Terra," was thwarted with the help of Arkon,just as the domestic political dangers provoked by Thomas Cardif could only be thwarted by Gucky's solo action.
Humanity can further develop peacefully only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself -- and so far that seems a long way to go ...
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
A mutual-assistance pact between Arkon andTerra is quickly signed -- and the fast spaceships of the Solar fleet stand ready at all times to intervene anywhere, wherever peace and order on the galactic planets are disturbed.
This time the emergency telecom of a dying Arkon governor launches the FINMARK, a state-class cruiser, to the water world Opghan ...
Major Thomas Untcher and his people stumble upon the ENEMY IN DARKNESS ..


An Arkonide robot governor on the water-planet Opghan is assassinated. Thomea Untcher and the crew of the FINMARK are sent to investigate.

The FINMARK sets down on one of the planet's few islands. As the crew exits the ship they are attacked by a band of Ephogers, amphibious natives of Opghan. The Ephogers carry cannisters from which they release an unknown gas. Untcher orders all crew to close their envirnoment suits but it is too late -- and those exposed to the gas no longer follow orders. In order to continue, Untcher must corral and subdue affected crew, whom he imprisons in the ship.

With only a few loyal crew left, Untcher leaves the FINMARK in charge of a handful of loyal crew, and takes a small team into the ocean. They discover an underwater domed city -- but are soon captured by Springers and Aras. It turns out that the domed city is a sort of Ara research outpost. Originally the outpost's purpose was a long-term bioengineering project, to adapt Arkonide colonists to living underwater. The Ephogers are the results of that experiment. But recently the Aras have discovered the useful effects of a gas derived from germ cells of a local coral -- the same gas that was used to spread mutiny among Untcher's crew. The outpost has now turned its purpose to production of this gas, and Ephogers are forced into harvesting germ cells from the coral. The Aras freely reveal their plot to Untcher because he'll never leave this place alive. (Bond villain laugh.)

Meanwhile back at the ship, in Untcher's absence the disloyal crew break out of confinement, take over the ship, and allow Aras on board. The Aras have plant gas canisters on the FINMARK, with the idea to use them against Terrans when the FINMARK returns. Only a single loyal crew member remains: the ship's physician Ted Dunyan, who must find a way to get the ship out of enemy control.

Not all Ephogers are content with the Springer/Ara regime. Fortunately for Untcher, a revolutionary movement is building among Ephogers, but his success will depend on the timing of their uprising ....

Teaser for the next adventure:

THE ENEMY IN DARKNESS has taken a heavy blow, but Atlan knows that the great stellar empire of Arkan, whose leadership he has assumed, is sooner or later doomed unless he can quickly gather around himself energetic and able men of his people.
Can the "Sleepers", discovered by Gucky and left behind in the deeps of the Milky Way, become Atlans helpers ... ?
Clark Darlton tells more of this story in the next Perr-Rhodan novel (no. 94), which carries the title: THE FLAMING SUN!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Enemy in the Dark. The first edition was published by Ace in 1975 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 11 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and stories by William Rotsler and S.C. Smith

121swynn
Déc 16, 2018, 10:05 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 94: Die flammende Sonne (= The Flaming Sun) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: The sleepers wake -- and the spaceship becomes a Hell!
Date: June 21, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
The most dangerous threat to humanity thus far, which culminated in the "Battle of Terra," was thwarted with the help of Arkon,just as the domestic political dangers provoked by Thomas Cardif could only be thwarted by Gucky's solo action.
Humanity can further develop peacefully only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself -- and so far that seems a long way to go ...
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
In the course of the quickly-signed mutual-assistance pact between Arkon andTerra it has already come to a few police actions of the Solar Fleet, who operate everywhere within the Arkonide jurisdiction where peace and order have been disturbed.
But it is very clear to Atlan that sooner or later Arkon is doomed to fall, unless he can quickly gather to himself energetic and able men of his people.
Could the "sleepers" discovered by Gucky and left behind the vastness of Milky Way, become Atlan's helpers, or will THE FLAMING SUN consume them ...?


Back in Episode 81, Gucky discovered a generation ship full of Arkonides, whose mission had been usurped by its robot crew. Gucky aided an uprising aginst the robot mutineers, and pointed the ship toward a habitable planet. Now it occurs to Atlan that the passengers on the "Spaceship of the Ancestors" might be the old-fashioned can-do sort of Arkonides so lacking on modern Arkon. Desperate for competent people to fill his bureaucracy, Atlan asks Perry to find the generation ship and recruit its passengers.

First problem is, the ship is not where it should be along the path where Gucky left it. That's because the crew decided to hurry planetfall and attempted a short jump to get closer to their goal. Second problem is, the jump had the side effect of waking all the passengers in cryo sleep, for whom the ship has not enough room and not enough supplies. Third problem is, thir jump has brought them too close a sun, so even if they solve the problem of accommodations they're still going to dive into the sun.

Teaser for the next adventure:

THE FLAMING SUN did not consume the "Sleepers" who had been awakened far ahead of schedule -- but they would have soon torn themselves to bits, if the ship had not been discovered just in time by one of the search units sent by the Solar Fleet.
The "Sleepers" are led by Perry Rhodan safely to Arkon, where Atlan receives them. But Perry Rhodan must hastily depart -- he receives a telepathic order which he cannot decline!
Perry Rhodan sees the SKY WITHOUT STARS!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Blazing Sun. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 12 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor" and "The Diversifal," a short story by Ross Rocklynne.

122swynn
Déc 19, 2018, 12:10 am

 

Perry Rhodan 95: Himmel Ohne Sterne (= Sky Without Stars) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: They follow the call of the ghost-being from Planet Wanderer -- and cross through the void between the Milky Ways!
Date: June 28, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
But one thing is clear to Perry: the further development of humanity will be possible only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself!
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
Perry Rhodan, who performed a great service for Atlan by rescuing the Arkonide "sleepers," rests with the superbattleship DRUSUS on Arkon III, when something happens which the Administrator never expected!
Perry Rhodan and the mutants receive from across the universe a telepathic call of unbelievable strength, and with this call begins an adventurous voyage into the SKY WITHOUT STARS!


Back in Episode 32, Perry was taken to the planet Barkon by "Him," the disembodied intelligence residing on planet Wanderer. (In this adventure, "He" becomes "He or It"; sometime in a future adventure, "He or It" will become "IT," and "IT" IT wil stay. Anyway ... ) Barkon's solar system had wandered into intergalactic space, and Perry helped the Barkonides transform their planet into a giant spaceship so that they could return to the Milky Way Galaxy. He/It/IT warned Perry that he might live to regret this good deed, but Perry did it anyway.

Looks like it might soon be time to find out what IT was talking about. Because IT contacts Perry with orders to fly to Wanderer. On Wanderer, IT explains that IT has lost all telepathic contact with the Barkonides and that Perry *must* go find them to see what happened. Perry, Gucky and Wuriu Sengu fly to Barkon and find it right where it is supposed to be in intergalactic space. Unfortunately, all is not well: there is no sign of life on Barkon which is quite literally frozen: even the atmosphere has frozen and precipitated to the planet's surface. Though they find no visible signs of life, Gucky can telepathically sense they are not alone, and they are attacked by invisible beings, whom they fend of with energy weapons.

Eventually the team finds its way underground, where they find the Barkonide population intact but asleep. Perry wakes a few of the Barkonides and learn the planet's fate. It turns out that some time ago Barkon was first attacked by invisible beings, after which the planet's systems started shutting down one by one. In desperation, the Barkonides put themselves in suspended animation in hopes of sleeping through the difficulties. The team restarts the planet's reactor, permanently fixing its switch in the "on" position. They fight a few more invisible creatures, then as the planet begins to restore itself they see several ships -- presumably of the invisible attackers -- leaving the planet. They build a shield to protect the planet from future invasion.

They report back to IT, but Perry cannot help thinking he'll probably run into the invisible attackers again.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The author of today's volume, whose stury you have just finished, has made a second "Flight into Infinity" with you, dear Perry-Rhodan-friends.
On the other hand, K.H. Scheer, the author of our next Perry-Rhodan-novel, will lead you back to Arkon -- to Atlan and the battle with the ANTI!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Starless Realm. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 13 of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor", the short story, "Love" by Richard Wilson, and an elegiac poem to Thora by Bill Cox.

123swynn
Modifié : Déc 20, 2018, 12:24 am

 

Perry Rhodan 96: Der Anti (= The Anti) / K.H. Scheer
Tagline: The fate of a stellar empire -- in the hands of a thief! -- The 7th Atlan-adventure!
Date: July 5, 1963

The story so far:
When the stranded Arkonide research ship was discovered on the Moon in 1971, laying the cornerstone to unification of terrestrial humanity and to the Solar Empire that grew out of that unification, nobody yet suspected -- not even Perry Rhodan, founder of the Terran star-realm -- what struggles and strength of nerve it would cost in the course of years to protect this realm against attacks from inside and out.
But one thing is clear to Perry: the further development of humanity will be possible only if peace reigns in the galaxy itself!
Even Atlan the Undying, who recently replaced the gigantic machine that nipped every revolt against the Arkonide central command with mercilessly aggressive robot fleets, wants peace.
Atlan, now called Imperator Gonozal VIII, and Perry Rhodan, Administrator of the Solar Empire, support each other in their efforts, if only out of pure self-defense.
In the wake of the mutual defense pact agreed to betwen Arkon and Terra, it has already come to a few important relief operations.
When Perry Rhodan returns to Earth after his second "Flight into Infinity," he accommodates Atlan's precarious political situation by reassigning John Marshall, the leader of the Mutant Corps, as liaison officer to Atlan.
As Perry Rhodan gave this order, he knew nothing yet of the existence of the ANTI ...


On Perry's orders John Marshall goes to Arkon to be a sort of bodyguard for Atlan. One night shortly after his arrival somebody releases stun gas through the palace ventilator, knocking everyone out. When Atlan awakes he finds that his cell activator has been stolen. The cell activator is a device he wears at all times because it maintains his health making him practically immortal. When it is taken he has 60 hours to retrieve it or he will age rapidly and die.

Perry Rhodan rushes to Arkon with most of the Mutant Corps. They work with Atlan to follow what clues they can and track the culprits to a temple on Arkon II. Atlan, Perry, and the Mutant Corps surround the temple but cannot get further. The culprits are "anti-mutants", who can neutralize all of the mutants' abilities. Negotiations drag on. Finallly seeing no other option, Arkonide and Terran forces begin a conventional attack.

During the attack, a spaceship lits from the temple; Perry, Atlan, and Ivan Ivanovich Goratschin take the DRUSUS and follow the ship to a moon of the planet Gelal, where they shoot down the enemy ship. Descending to the planet they find themselves in a standoff with the fugitive, who wears a personal shield that makes him impervious to energy attacks. With time running out for Atlan, Perry remembers that he keeps archery equipment on the DRUSUS for recreation, and that the criminal's energy shield will not protect him from a ballistic attack.

In the nick of time, Atlan recovers his cell activator. But the story is not over: the antis may have stolen the device, but they could not have known what they were doing. Somebody else must have been the mastermind because very few people even know what the cell activator is. Atlan knows, of course, and Perry, and Bully ... and Thomas Cardif, Perry estranged son, missing and assumed dead since the events of Episode #90.

Teaser for the next adventure:

The Anti was defeated, but the actual masterminds of this attack on Atlan, with whose continued existence the fate of the Solar Empire is also intimately associated, have not yet been neutralized.
And whoever takes them on, must be ready to pay the PRICE OF POWER ...


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Mystery of the Anti. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with the final part of Ray Cummings's "The Man on the Meteor", a short story by Raymond Z. Gallun, and "Stomp the Shadowman," and an essay by David Gerrold.

124swynn
Déc 21, 2018, 12:15 am

 

Perry Rhodan 97: Preis der Macht (= The Anti) / K.H. Scheer
Tagline: First you ridicule them, then you learn to fear them -- the "Liars of Solten"
Date: July 12, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan and his trusted friends have followed a long and hard trail since the days of the "Third Power", which after many conflicts brought about the political unification of all humans on Earth.
With help from Arikonide supertechnology they have shown Terrans the way to the stars -- in spite of strong resistance and setbacks from within and without.
But even in their worst emergencies they never resigned or gave up, but instead looked for solutions, and so they managed to preserve the Solar Imperium of Humanity and even to grow it!
Meanwhile we write on Earth the year 2044 A.D. Arkon, led by Atlan the Undying, and Terra are allies.
But because the two stellar powers are close allies, every crisis in one ally's sphere of influence causes problems in the other partner's as well.
THE ANTI, whose activites were directed against Atlan, was a typical example!
But now Perry Rhodan will be keenly reminded that it is his turn to pay the PRICE OF POWER ...


It's now Perry Rhodan's turn to be the target of assassination attempts, and after avoiding a death by car-bomb Perry decides to go looking for his son Thomas Cardif. Following one clue and another, Perry decides it is likely that Cardif is hanging out on the Springer home planet Archetz. The Terrans go to Archetz disguised as Solteners, members of a matriarchal society whose males are allowed to be merchants while females rule the home. The Solteners have deep outstanding debts to the Springer, giving the team a pretext to approach the planet.

Once on Archetz, the Mutants use their gifts to determine that Cardif is in fact on the planet -- but underground in Springer custody. Gucky and a couple other teleporters fetch him and the team carries him back to Arkon. Perry tries one more time to patch things up with Cardif, but he refuses. For the safety of the two empires, the Terrans implant a hypnotic block that will essentially wipe Cardif's memory.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Perrry Rhodan had no other choice in this situation than to allow his rebellious son to be transformed by a technical hypnotick block into a harmless dreamer.
But for every dreamer isn't there an awakening ... ?
The next Perry-Rhodan-novel does not yet answer this question. Instead its theme is the "Ilts" -- Guck's fellows!
UNLEASHED POWERS -- that is the name of the next novel -- also comes from the pen of Kurt Brand!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Power's Price. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 1 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World" and "One Hundred Generations", a story by Philip Jacques Bartel.

125lyzard
Modifié : Déc 21, 2018, 4:41 pm

Doing a belated catch-up here.

You do have to wonder whether science-fiction-y guys are in fact even more clueless about women than your average male, or whether it's just that they make their cluelessness so very, very public. :D

The fact that these guys have so much more of an idea of what to do with Gucky than they do with any of their female characters is...disturbing.

Question: how much acknowledgement is there of Perry's failings as a husband and father? Or is it shrugged off in view of the bigger picture?

126swynn
Déc 24, 2018, 12:20 am

>126 swynn: Well, I was a late bloomer so I may not have the most insight ...

The observation that the authors can imagine Gucky better than they can imagine women is on target. Women are an especially puzzling species of alien life. It's as if the series was written by pre-adolescent boys instead of just for them.

So far rhere is no acknowledgement of Perry's failings. There have barely been any hints that he could have behaved differently.

127swynn
Déc 24, 2018, 1:20 am

 

Perry Rhodan 98: Entfesselte Gewalten (= Unchained Powers) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: Monstrous experiments -- and a planet goes under ...
Date: July 19, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan and his truste friends have followed a long and hard trail since the days of the "Third Power", which after many conflicts brought about the political unification of all humans on Earth.
With help from Arikonide supertechnology they have shown Terrans the way to the stars -- in spite of strong resistance and setbacks from within and without.
But even in their worst emergencies they never resigned or gave up, but instead looked for solutions, and so they managed to preserve the Solar Imperium of Humanity and even to grow it!
Meanwhile on Earth the year 2045 A.D. has arrived. Stable relationships have been established, and Gucky, Perry Rhodans most able -- if also most undisciplined -- mutant, decides after many years in the Mutant Corps to seek out Tramp one more time, the planet of his birth.
Gucky receives his vacation -- he earned it honestly after all -- and he flies alone with a space-jet ... and stumbles on a chaos of UNCHAINED POWERS ...also


A team of Orgh scientists land on Trmp, Gucky's home world. They have plans for some sort of large-scale experiments and start setting up their equipment. The native Ilts telekinetically "play" with the new toys and unintentionally set of an explosion that destroys part of the Orgh fleet. The Orgh retaliate by wiping out all life within a radius of a thousand kilometers of their landing site.

A few months later, Gucky has an acute attack of homesickness. He requests and is granted vacation for a visit home. But even as Gucky approaches Tramp he knows something is wrong: something has knocked Tramp out of its orbit and it is descending toward its sun. Nervous about the planet's inhabitants, Gucky rushes a landing and crashes. Stuck on the planet himself now, Gucky looks for survivors and locates a group of very young Ilts who had been brought to caves deep beneath the surface, where they were shielded from the high heat.

Gucky calms the children and then goes looking for a way off the planet. He cannot launch his crashed ship, and all the communications equipment was destroyed in the crash. His only idea is to improvise some sort of beacon. He does this by turning his energy weapon on the Orgh equipment. This starts a chain reaction which culminates in a release of energy that is noticed in Terrania, who sends the BURMA to investigate. When Gucky senses the BURMA is close enough he starts teleporting from Tramp to the BURMA and back, carrying as many children as he can.

Teaser for the next adventure:

Only 28 Ilts could be rescued before their world went under. They are what the cruiser commander calls a "band of rascals"! But you can't blame them, for in the end all mouse-beavers are still in their childhood -- and the "play instinct" is still pronounced even in "adults" like Gucky.
The next novel concerns a completely different theme, even though the volume likewise has a selfless helper of humanity as protagonist: Crest!
A FRIEND OF HUMANS is the title, and the author is William Voltz!


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Unleashed Powers. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with a cover by Gray Morrow, together with part 2 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World" and the novelette "Spawn" by P. Schuyler Miller.

128swynn
Modifié : Déc 24, 2018, 3:05 am

 

Perry Rhodan 99: Ein Freund der Menschen (= A Friend of Humans) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: The exiles come -- and the Lonely One on Ufgar's Planet has no time to die ...
Date: July 26, 1963

The story so far:
Perry Rhodan and his trusted friends have followed a long and hard trail since the days of the Third Power, which after many conflicts brought about the political unification of all humans on Earth.
With help from Arikonide supertechnology they have shown Terrans the way to the stars -- in spite of strong resistance and setbacks from within and without.
But even in their worst emergencies they never resigned or gave up, but instead looked for solutions, and so they managed to preserve the Solar Imperium of Humanity and even to grow it!
But the Terrans did not complete it alone, but only with generous support from aliens!
One of these helpers of humanity is Crest, the old Arkonide who made Terra his new home!
Never in the course of decades has Crest especially stepped to prominence. It was his strength to work in the quiet and to share fruitful advice ...
Now, at the beginning of the year 2045, Crest is tired. He would like to spend his last days in quiet and reflection.
Perry Rhodan fulfills Crest's wish, but Crest does not find the long-sought quiet -- for otherwise we could not remain A FRIEND OF HUMANS and honor his promise ...


Crest retires to the second planet of Ufgar, an uninhabited place to spend his remaining days in quiet contemplation. Perry agrees, but refuses to let Crest rough it: the Terrans build Crest a well-outfitted home with robot staff, and leave him a space-jet with the latest technology, just in case Crest decides to come back.

But Crest barely has time to wave good-bye and put his feet up when he has visitors: a ship of exiled Unither criminals looking for a way to buy themselves out of exile. It doesn't take them long to figure out that stealing a late-model space-jet should do the trick.

Teaser for the next adventure:
They placed a memorial on Earth for Crest -- the old Arkonide who went on a search for immortality and instead discovered Earth ...
Crest has now become immortal through his sacrificial death -- but in a different way to the one he once dreamed ...
With Crest's passing similtaneously begins a new epoch in the future history of humanity -- narrated by K.H. Scheer in the novel THE TARGET STAR, the anniversary number 100 of the Perry Rhodan series.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Friend to Mankind. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976, together with part 3 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World" and a short story by John Russell Fearn.

129swynn
Déc 26, 2018, 1:04 am

 

Perry Rhodan 100: Der Zielstern (= The Target Star) / Kurt Brand
Tagline: A new epoch of space travel begins -- and experimental cruiser FANTASY goes on a great journey ...
Date: August 2, 1963

The story so far:
Hello, dear friends of PERRY RHODAN!
On the occasion of the second anniversary volume of this SF-series, which is actually no "series" but rather a large-scale cycle whose subject is the further development of Humanity in utopian form, we would like to direct a few personal words to you, which you have long since earned as faithful readers.
Let us thank you for the great interest that many of you have shown through suggestions for improvement, thematic suggestions and even criticism, which found their expression in hundreds of letters to the publisher.
Let us also assure you, that the team of PERRY RHODAN authors and editors carefully consider all readers' letters -- even the unanswered ones -- and have looked for ways to make the series even better than it has been so far.
Should we make small errors in the future, we would like to ask you in advance, dear friends of PERRY RHODAN, to excuse us under the motto: Errare humanum est! or: Even robots are not perfect!


Fifty-seven years have passed since the last adventure. The Solar Empire has developed and expanded. The Moon has been converted into an industrial complex for the production of spaceships.

Terran researchers have been working on a "linear drive" adapted from Druuf technology: a ship equipped with this drive will not need to jump into 5-dimensional space for FTL speeds; instead, using a pocket of 4- or 5-dimensional half-space, the ship can approach a target star while keeping its target continuously in sight. The FANTASY is the first ship equipped with this drive, and Perry and Bully are on board for its maiden voyage. As Perry and the crew test the limits of the new drive, they accidentally steer straight through the heart of a star, which knocks them off course and into a strange system. The system has a blue background glow, prompting the Terrans to call it "The Blue System." On the fifth planet, which they name "Sphinx," they find evidence of advanced technical civilization. They land on a moon of Sphinx and proceed to explore.

Sphinx's inhabitants are "Akons", and may be the distant forbears of the Arkonides. They do not welcome strangers. The Akonide ruling council sends the (female) sociologist Auris von Las-Toór to tell the strangers to go away. This she does; she also uses a circuit sensor to spy on the content stored in the FANTASY's computer; she also quickly crushes on Perry Rhodan. From the stolen data, the ruling council determines that the Terrans are not former colonists -- a fact which makes the Akons even more hostile. They attack the Terrans with a stun ray, but the Terrans manage an emergency launch and flee the Blue System.

Teaser for the next adventure:
THE TARGET STAR has introduced an completely new epoch of space travel -- but new achievements always demand a tribute, as Clark Darlton shows with PERRY RHODAN volume 101, THE SPACE TRAMP.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as The Target Star. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with cover art by Gray Morrow, together with part 4 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World" and a short story by H.L. Gold.

130swynn
Modifié : Jan 2, 2019, 11:00 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 101: Der Weltraum-Tramp (= The Space Tramp) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: He breaks the law -- but he helps the castaways on the living planet!
Date: August 9, 1963

The story so far:
A new epoch for humanity has dawned!
Since the events portrayed in the novel previous to the last one, 57 years have passed -- on Earth the year is now 2102.
Much has happened since then!
The danger of the Druuf no longer exists, because the overlap-front between the two universes has long since become too unstable to allow passage.
The Arkonide Atlan has, with support from humans, secured his position as Emperor. The alliance between Arkon and the Solar Empire has borne fruit -- especially for the Terrans, many of whom hold important positions on Arkon itself. Atlan must allow this, because he cannot trust most of his countrymen.
The Solar Empire has become the most important trade power at the edge of the Milky Way. For 22 years there has practically been a stream of emigrants to suitable settler worlds. Similarly there exist Terran emassies and trade offices on many planets inhabited by other intelligent life.
In short, for many people the dream of their forefathers -- the journey to the stars -- has finally become reality. Likewise for the SPACE TRAMP ...


Samuel Graybound, a smuggler with a heart of gold, is preparing for his next run: medicine for colonists of Glatra III, hidden in a cargo of teddy bears. After his first jump though, he catches the attention of a patrol ship of the Solar Fleet, who demands to search Graybound's ship for contraband. Graybound knows that the Fleet officer would find the medicine, and so jumps blind to a random destination.

Meanwhile, Perry and the crew of the FANTASY have escaped the Blue System but still find themselves in an unfamiliar part of the galaxy. Before they can get their bearings an explosion compromises FANTASY's life support system. Survivors of the accident escape on a space-jet to the only nearby planet capable of supporting life: a planet with a featureless grey surface. Shortly after landing they notice that the space-jet is actually sinking into the surface. The crew evacuate, but send out an emergency beacon before the craft sinks completely into the surface. The crew set out in search of firmer ground. As they proceed they notice that they are being stalked by humanoid figures that seem to be of the same substance as the ground. The threat posed by these figures is made clear when they capture a crewman who moves too slowly: they trap him and absorb him into the ground. The survivors' only defense is to keep moving. Eventually they spy a small, rocky island that rises above the grey surface.

Fortunately, Graybound's random jump has brought him to the same region of space as Perry's calamity. Graybound picks up the space-jet's emergency beacon, and follows it to the planet where the FANTASY's remaining crew are stranded. Graybound locates the crew and helps them fight off the grey monsters, then evacuates them from the planet. On the way back to Terrania, Perry recruits Graybound to be a pilot on a new linear-drive ship.

Teaser for the next adventure:
THE SPACE TRAMP is unique, isn't he, dear Perry-Rhodan-friends?
A very special sort of unique is represented by Colonel Nike Quinto, chief of DIVISION III, which is always deployed, when in the vastness of space Terrans are in danger.
You will read more abou this in Kurt Mahr's next Perry-Rhodan novel (number 102)
DIVISION III INTERVENES


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Vagabond of Space. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with cover art by Gray Morrow, together with part 5 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World", part 2 of Andrew Offut's "Final SOlution", and the short story, "Beyond All Weapons" by L. Ron Hubbard.

131swynn
Modifié : Jan 2, 2019, 10:59 pm

 

Perry Rhodan 102: Abteiling III greift ein (= Division III Intervenes) / Clark Darlton
Tagline: Terra's bloodhounds in hot pursuit -- who destroyed the CAROLINA?
Date: August 16, 1963

The story so far:
A new epoch for humanity has dawned!
Since Crest's death, 57 years have passed -- on Earth the year is now 2102.
Much has happened since then!
The Arkonide Atlan has, with support from humans, secured his position as Emperor. The alliance between Arkon and the Solar Empire has borne fruit -- especially for the Terrans, many of whom hold important positions on Arkon itself. Atlan must allow this, because he cannot trust most of his countrymen.
The Solar Empire has become the most important trade power at the edge of the Milky Way. For 22 years there has practically been a stream of emigrants to suitable settler worlds. Similarly there exist Terran emassies and trade offices on many planets inhabited by other intelligent life.
Obviously, tt often happens in the vastness of space that dangerous events occur.
But whoever attacks Terrans, has to deal with Division III ...


With the rise of the Solar Empire Terrans have been expanding trade routes, which erode the interstellar trade monopoly formerly enjoyed by the Springers. Springers have been retaliating by attacking Terran traders whenever they can do so with impunity. Thus, the unarmed Terran trader CAROLINA is en route from Terrania to Arkon when it is destroyed by a Springer battleship. Undetected by the Springers, a small group of survivors escape in a lifeboat and land safely on the ocean-planet Ghama. There they are captured by intelligent amphibians with loyalties to the Springers.

The disappearance of the Carolina prompts the intervention of Division III, a new agency of the Solar Empire led by the irascilble Nike Quinto. Quinto's agents start from the CAROLINA's last known location and CSI their way to Ghama. Captain Ron Landry realizes that the Terrans lack the trust of the native Ghamese, so he gains that by hunting a Ladiok, a marine megafauna that likes to eat Ghamese. Landry's successful hunt wins to the Terrans' side some of the Ghamese, who assist in locating and rescuing the survivors.

Teaser for the next adventure:
Dear Perry-Rhodan-friends!
You have just finished reading an adventure of DIVISION III, and we can already assure you that you will read more about Nike Quinto and his people.
But next, Kurt Brand, with his novel THE PLASMA-MONSTER, builds on the exciting events of Volume 100, in which the inhabitants of the "Blue System" play a decisive role.


The cover is by Johnny Bruck, who also provided some interior illustrations.

The (German-language) Perrypedia webpage is here.

This adventure was translated into English as Action: Division 3. The first edition was published by Ace in 1976 with cover art by Gray Morrow, together with part 6 of Stanton Coblentz's "The Sunken World" and part 1 of "Arleen" by Kris and Lil Neville.