June 24, 2003
For years, Garching near Munich has enjoyed a good reputation as a site for well-organized cons. Last weekend, this university town's civic center presented itself at its best - and compared with the con of two years ago, the weather played along this time as well.
But let's take this one step at a time: The actual con (
www.garching-con.net ) was to start on Saturday, June 21. Nevertheless, the first couple of hundred fans already arrived on Friday. On account of the nice summer weather, the beer tables in front of the town's civic center and around the attractive square were populated by Perry Rhodan readers, writers, and illustrators. The extremely relaxed setting inspired everyone just to hang out and chat.I arrived on Friday in the early evening together with Miriam Hofheinz and Klaus Bollhoefener - both from Perry Rhodan marketing - and Hermann Ritter, the new chairperson of the Perry Rhodan FanZentrale. We immediately threw ourselves into the conversations, which were continued later on inside the civic center. I went to bed relatively late and showed up not quite in top form at the civic center around ten in the morning on Saturday.
The 2003 Perry Rhodan Con was kicked off right on time with a spectacular introductory video. After Michael Rauter had welcomed the guests on behalf of the organizers, Garching's mayor spoke to the crowd. Then, Susan Schwarz introduced the planned activities, at which point Walter Ernsting, a/k/a Clark Darlton, greeted the fans via a live web cam hookup, which resulted in much applause. The fans practically cheered the veteran author - proof of Clark Darlton's enduring popularity.
Unfortunately I couldn't catch most of the day's program, as I spent much of my time in various individual meetings with writers, illustrators, licensing partners, and fans. Such cons are known to have the great benefit that many people show up whom one otherwise doesn't get to see during the rest of the year. For example, in the evening there was a dinner with Sascha Mamczak, science fiction editor at the Heyne publishing company, as well as writers Uwe Anton, Hubert Haensel and Leo Lukas. Topics included the Andromeda mini-series, plus the Odyssey series, at which all participants are currently hard at work.
Of the program itself, I saw, for instance, part of an amusing show on marketing, which involved Klaus Bollhoefener and the movie reporter Robert Vogel proposing all kinds of potential and outlandish ideas for popularizing Perry Rhodan. After much appreciative laughter, the fans hoped in the end that the future will not turn out quite as the two gentlemen had suggested.
I personally was on the program in the afternoon, discussing glitches and curiosities from the past two years. I read out stylistic howlers by the authors (which do indeed occur in the course of one hundred issues over two years), as well as excerpts from especially hilarious, or even plainly awful, readers' letters.
The highlight of the con in my view was a performance by Perry Rhodan writer Leo Lukas. In Austria, Lukas is better known as a cabaret artist, and this con marked his first appearance at a Perry Rhodan event. On stage for over an hour with a one man show featuring poems and aphorisms, satire and irony, Leo sang songs, played the guitar, and invited the audience to participate. Some parts of his program were quite thought-provoking, although most pieces were so funny that they repeatedly received spontaneous applause and, at the end, a standing ovation.
For me, the main program of the con concluded with a send-up of the PR series, in which Herman Ritter and I - and also with some help from volunteers from the audience - gave a satirical bent to various aspects of the series. After that, while the main auditorium was turned into a space disco, we sat around with writers and fans in the civic center and much later ended the evening at a somewhat obscure bar in Garching's town center.
Sunday is the day when most fans depart early in order to - as a wiseguy remarked - “also really enjoy the highway traffic jams in the heat." To conclude the proceedings, all guests of honor appeared on stage for a discussion moderated by Rita Gruenbein on the topic of “Eternal Future," which was also the theme of the con.
Saying good-bye was hard work: It took quite a while before I had finally shaken everyone's hand. We left Garching around 3 P.M., only to experience the completely overcrowded A8 autobahn from Munich over Stuttgart to Karlsruhe at temperatures of around 35 degrees Centigrade (98° F) in the shade. But that's another story …
P.S.: The first con report already went online during the con and can be read at:
www.terracom-online.net/sonderausgabe/pages/news.php . Another con report can be found at: www.demondestroyer.de/pccn/index.html .
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