My Perry Rhodan Collection

Book Review.

Can you imagine... I actually have 1000 issues of Perry Rhodan on my bookshelf. And I haven't even read most of them!

That made me wonder... When should I ever read them? It's 2017 now, and if I would read one every week that would take me 20 years to read them all. Will I still be able to read them at that old age?

And even... If I want to ever read them, I'd better start now before it's too late! So, let's start before I get too old to find my glasses...

My collection

You're forgiven if you've never heard of this series. Note that the original series was / is in German, and Perry Rhodan, in spite of being (partially?) available in English, didn't do that much in the rest of the world. (I found some translated text-files online, but I haven't got a clue how many were translated to English).

I started reading these when I was still at school, probably around number 500 or so, the blue 'starry' covers. (Note that different countries have different covers, and during re-prints covers may have changed again.) I guess the teachers didn’t mind as long as I kept silent. To be honest, reading in the classroom may have lowered my average score a little bit (as I didn’t have a clue what it all was about during the subsequent tests, alas).

At first I bought them individually, but when I started working abroad I took a subscription for a number of years. When I found out I never read them, I cancelled that. Still, I picked up a few left and right, second hand. During my stint in the army I managed to buy a batch of second hand PR’s in the 250..350 range. I kept a subscription for a while, but never came around reading the newer ones.

So whilst I was in china the stack of unread booklets increased... When I returned to Europe I worked for a while in Germany, and started reading both the latest installments, as well as a re-run. (Amazingly, there were three concurrent runs in Germany, the actual series, a re-run somewhere around 600, and a re-run somewhere around 150.) This triggered me to begin completing my collection.

Over time a few more came into my possession, and in 2012 I picked up 5 big boxes for free.

Not good.

Because now I had to get them all, sigh. So, I gambled, and bought a large set of PR booklets second hand on ‘Marktplaats’, our local equivalent of Craig’s List / eBay. Which caused more stress... at first the plan was to stick to the first 1000 and ignore what came after (as the storylines weren’t getting any better, to be honest). Unfortunately, I now have a substantial amount of PR’s after 1000. In fact, I estimate I may be missing perhaps 5% of the first 2000. (Strangely enough, it seems I miss the whole 1400..1500 range.)

So, should I go for completion, or get rid of the second 1000? Decisions, decisions…

Imagine. I’ve got ten thousand eBooks waiting for my attention. I now have another 2000 pulp magazines on the shelf. If I would read another PR every week (and take two weeks off every year) that would still take 2000 / 50 = 40 years of reading! Which would take some good health.

And my collection is still not 100% complete. Will it ever be? I dunno. It's not that important (and certainly not worth the money and probably not worth the effort) but it's fun to browse through these (dare I say it?) 'pulp' booklets. Except for the first 6 which were printed as 'mini pockets' (subsized softcovers) the covers, well, suit the quality of the writing, and the quality of the paper itself is, you guessed it, pulp...

Should you read these? Only if you have a thousand or so laying around and you got nothing better to do...


Translated

I wonder if, except for the regular translation errors and blunders (Bericht van de Kont is a fairly strange and somewhat funny title in Dutch), names and locations have been translated or not.

Over the years I started to prefer the original English versions of books and movies. My french isn't fluent enough to read books in that language at all. When it comes to German books... Well... Yeah, I can handle those, but where possible I prefer the Dutch translation.

I guess I'll accept any other language copies if I can't find the originals anywhere. So... When should I start reading? I cannot wait forever...


More

• Perry Rhodan
• https://sites.google.com/site/perryrhodan01/Home
• http://www.maanbrein.nl
• http://perryrhodan.us

Dapper / RetroTales! 63