Pop Open Up The Champagne Bottles?

by Klaus N. Frick

September 8, 2003


This Monday actually is a very special day, and it’s quite surprising that there haven’t been any celebrations yet: exactly 42 years ago today, the first weekly Perry Rhodan issue was published. “Unternehmen Stardust" (“Enterprise Stardust") reached the newsstands, triggering an unanticipated success story.

42 years are an unbelievably long time. And anyone with even just some sense of historical context will realize that these 42 years encompass more than “merely a pulp fiction series."

The building of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany; wars in Vietnam and Angola, Afghanistan and the Gulf, Congo and the Middle East, Nicaragua and Nepal; the landing on the moon and the venturing of man-made space probes to the most distant planets of the Solar System; the invention of the personal computer, the copy machine, and the mobile phone, not to mention the Internet; the development of contemporary music as we know it today, ranging from all the varieties of rock and pop to hip-hop and electronica - the past 42 years mark an amazing period of unbelievable change on this Earth. In trying to visualize the year 1961, one might just begin to appreciate how grand the conceptual ideas really were that Karl-Herbert Scheer and Walter Ernsting a/k/a Clark Darlton developed: mankind united and jointly going forth into space, a peaceful mankind without any more conflicts between peoples and religions, political systems and cultures, a state of affairs of which even in the year 2003, readers can only dream.

Throughout all these years, numerous researchers have analyzed the extent to which the Perry Rhodan series has been a mirror of its times. In looking back at the history of the most successful sf series in the world, I’m generally aware that, despite all the action, it is - and should remain - an utopian vision: a dream of a better world, a dream of a just world, a dream of a world without wars, hunger, and poverty.

For these reasons, I will indeed open up the champagne - at least in my mind. Here’s to the Perry Rhodan series and its past! Here’s to the Perry Rhodan series and its further evolution! And here’s to a better future!

KNF