The MM Project

I have to admit that I know Perry Rhodan since I was a twerp but actually never read any of the books. My grandfather always brought tons of them and other „pulp fiction“ books from the flea market and read them in his small break after lunch. I never was into Perry Rhodan. My grandpa always told us about the crazy stories when astronauts were changed into mice and so on. Unfortunatly my grandma dumped all of them when my grandpa died some years ago… Yesterday I got curious and wanted to know what is so damned special about Perry Rhodan. I mean they broke the 2500 issue limit last summer.

I have to add that this books are released weekly, the next issue will be released tomorrow. And the series exists for 48 years without any breaks. Additonally they started a new „Zyklus“ or cycle, which is a connected storyline. I also had so much time yesterday cause I wrote my intermediate examination (I had to look it up on Google, too. I used a word-by-word translation on Twitter yesterday) and was done with it after an hour. So I went to the tobacco shop and bought the latest issue of the Donald Duck Sonderheft (DDSH) and the latest available issue #2532 of Perry Rhodan. Of course I started with Donald… when you are a regular reader of my blog you might have expected that!!!

Anyways, I finished the DDSH quite fast and started with Perry Rhodan. The first thing I noticed was that the book is quite thin. The story itself had only about 65 pages which I thought to be very short. But I guess the time span for the authors to write the stories is always very short. I read that they only have about 6 weeks or so. And you also have only 7 days to finish the story. Maybe you read slowly or only some pages each day so you can‘t be done with a full 300 pages book in just 7 days. I mean, I read a book with 300 pages on only one lazy Sunday, but that means I don‘t do anything else from 9 am to 6 pm. Additionally there was a readers corner, some artworks and little articles by former and current authors.

OK, the story, well… As I already mentioned I had never read any Perry Rhodan book before. I didn‘t know any of the characters, any of the ways this universe worked, even the introduction text didn‘t help me much. The only thing I knew were: Perry Rhodan is human, he is immortal, the series takes place in the future (somewhat like the year 4000 or so) and there are aliens all around. The most important characters were introduced in a small box at the beginning of the story and there was a short glossary at the end explaining the two alien races in this story. I think without that I would have been lost completly. Fortunatly the storyline within this cycle seems to have started on a new point in the previous issue and many things were explained roughly. The story was about a war on a space station. There was this race called the Maahks (not Makla), one group of them evolved and gained the ability to turn into shadows. The unevolved group of the Maahks of course was afraid of the „Shadow Maahks“ and started to hunt them. It somehow reminded me of the basic story of „X-Men“ but… it was OK. I really liked this episode. I don‘t tell too much when I say that Perry Rhodan actually dies in it. But I‘m sure he will come back soon. Maybe in the next issue??? Of course he will come back. Hello? This series is running for 48 years, they don‘t stop it now. But it is weird, the first issue I bought and of course I grab the one where he dies… I‘m a lucky little rabbit.

My conclusion (I have to write one, come on!):
If you are German, buy it. The books are only 1.85 € each. Not too much. And you have much Sci-Fi-Fun. I admit I only know one story of one author but the series has so many fans in the German languaged countries, and how can 80,000 people be wrong???

BTW: I edited my categories completly. They now look like this.

Music
-- Albums & EPs
-- Compilations
-- Projects
-- RPM Challenge
Random
The Outer World
-- Movies & TV
-- Videogame Vault
-- Written, Drawn & Animated

Follow the little red UFO!!!

[image source: www.perry-rhodan.net]