Planning The Story Line Through 2250

by Klaus N. Frick

February 19, 2003


By the time Robert Feldhoff arrived at Rastatt in the evening of Monday, February 10, I was quite exhausted from a marathon of meetings. During the day I had participated in several discussions that involved business matters in the widest sense. Therefore I really savored knowing that in the coming days, I would be dealing more with the contents of the Perry Rhodan series. After all, the content of the series is what interests an editor the most - on a purely personal level, of course. It goes without saying that business and marketing matters are of equal importance.

Anyway, the two of us had much to discuss. Important agenda items that evening were the last few novels as well as the connections between the Perry Rhodan booklet novellas and the Centauri story line in Atlan, plus current corporate developments. In the course of the evening Robert presented detailed ideas for the action through issue 2199, and naturally we discussed them accordingly.

I'm quite sure that the readers will be bowled over by some real surprises. Of course it would go too far to reveal anything about these things at this point. In any event, there will be a number of revelations that, hopefully, no one has been able to foresee thus far, both in Perry Rhodan's story line, which describes the Terran's confrontation with the sinister Empire of Tradom, as well as in Atlan's, which features the Arkonide on board the Sol in an alien realm. The Perry Rhodan universe up to this point will change in some fundamental aspects, and … oh well, I'll just quit referring to such details now, as the readers will be able to read about these very matters in the course of the year 2003.

Our meeting continued in the morning of Tuesday, February 11. The main focus now was the plot line following issue 2200. At the forefront were, of course, the overall evolution of the Perry Rhodan universe, but also the depiction of individual new main and side characters. Here, again, we tried to invest as much “brain power" as possible in order to come up with a good, to very good, result.

Unfortunately I can't say anything more about this, except for the following: With issue 2200, X most certainly will play a new role, while Y will be completely changed. However, as the novel already is to be published in the fall, I'm sure that the readers can hold out till then …

Klaus Bollhöfener joined us for the lunch break. Our man for marketing and communications added further suggestions that concern the year 2003 and hence are just as interesting and important for a main writer.

In the course of Tuesday afternoon we also discussed the Andromeda paperbacks that are being published by Heyne and are selling quite well. On the agenda was the likelihood of a sequel, which. of course, wouldn't be set in the Andromeda galaxy but should involve a different subject matter. Robert already has developed an idea for this that I thought was quite workable. Much detail work will still be needed, though.

In the concluding discussion on Tuesday evening, Robert Feldhoff and I touched upon the “ancillary products" of the Perry Rhodan universe, ranging from the comic books to the Autorenbibliothek book series. Unfortunately it is unlikely that Robert himself will be contributing a novel to this series …

Overall, this meeting, which lasted one and a half days, again was quite comprehensive and demanding. By Tuesday I certainly felt completely drained, and once again I could really appreciate how complicated and demanding the job of a story line developer for the Perry Rhodan series must be.