Tag Archives: science fiction series

Patrolling Space In the Spaceship Orion

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I have mentioned the spaceship Orion previously in my post about Living Under Water. The German science fiction TV series Space Patrol (Raumpatrouille) follows the crew of the space ship Orion on their adventures through the galaxy.

Orion landed on a desert planetI remember waiting very excitedly for the première of the series and then every next week’s show. It came out at about the same time in 1966 as the original Star Trek, but it was much later that I finally watched my first Star Trek episode and it confirmed the German arrogance that we (the Germans) are better at creating things but it also confirmed the other stereotype that America is much better in marketing. Orion lasted seven episodes with a remastered movie version in the early 2000s, while Star Trek is still going strong after nearly half a century. Sets and special effects were so much more creative than the original Star Trek even though some people dared to make fun of some of the props, like the electric iron used to do some mysterious tuning task on the navigation console. In my mind then, those people just didn’t get it.

I do have the whole series on DVD and it is about time to watch it again, but today I enjoyed running into another fan of the series who took his admiration for the show a bit further than just buying the DVDs – he created stunning illustrations of the adventures of the star cruiser Orion.

I discovered Crossvalley Smith through a post on Facebook that featured one of his illustrations from the Perry Rhodan universe, another sweet memory of mine, a science fiction series published as weekly pulp novellas.

A scene from a landing of the Orion on a desert planet has for now replaced an anime illustration as my computer wall paper – go check out Crossvalley’s site, maybe you find something you enjoy.

Living Under Water

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A very early exposure to the idea of living under water came through a German science fiction series “Space Patrol” in the 60s, just a tad before the original StarTrek. Mankind had settled on the floor of the ocean and space ships took off from underwater bases through water funnels.

And after an adventure in space the crew met in the Starlight Casino for a drink and a round of futuristic dancing. Commander McLane’s apartment was obviously also located at the underwater city.

Something a bit more tangible was then envisioned in 2006 with the Hydropolis Underwater Hotel and Resort, but at this time it seems as if this project is at least on ice if not completely scrapped.

In other words, currently we still have to live with just the imagination of living under water. These imaginations are made a bit easeer through the pictures of Elena Kalis.

(from her Google+ Album)

40 Years in Space

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Originally Written November 2007:

I ran into a collection of imagery of space from the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. Isn’t that amazing how that sound, speaking of the 20th century as so long ago?

One of the images I seemed to remember was of an outpost on the moon created by Frank Tinsley.

Frank Tinsley - Outpost on the moon

But then there was an image of a very early Perry Rhodan novella – and THAT was fascinating. I had not quite started to read science fiction when this novella first came out, but some six years later I certainly read this novella when it came out in the second or third edition – so I knew…

Perry Rhodan - Venus in Danger

… “Venus in Danger” – novella #20!

For many years after coming to the wild west I had my family in Germany collect Perry Rhodans for me and then send them to me in batch, but this had stopped now about 20 years ago.

So I have to admit, I am not quite up-to-date any more.

A few month ago I had realized that and found out that I could actually subscribe to an electronic version of the newest issued and get them in my email in-box. I had not subscribed at that time as I did not think I would have enough time to read them, but at least I got myself a little fix in form of a free issue that was offered – novella #2300!

Can you believe this – 2300 – at 52 weekly booklets that is about 46 years.

Perry Rhodan - Harbingers of Chaos
Harbingers of Chaos

So – what has changed in the last forty to fifty years?

Certainly the cover design feels more modern, but I am sure that the next half century will eradicate that difference. Then there is the price – the old one about 20 cents (at the exchange rate at that time) and the new one weighting in at about $2.50 – with the inflation rate I guess the price has remained stable.

Then there is one noticeable difference. The subtitle of the series in 1962 was “The Great Space Series” but today it’s simply “The Greatest Science Fiction Series.”

OK, now to work – gotta finally read my free novella “Vorboten des Chaos” – and maybe, just maybe, it’s so good that I will indeed subscribe.

Update 2011: I actually never managed to read the free sample and only stumbled across this blog post because in a server crash I had lost many of the images used in this blog and I just noticed there was another blog post without its pictures. So, I set out to find them again and, in the process, ran into some new info…

  1. We are now in the last quarter of the cycle 2500…2599, the second cycle nearly done after I checked last – about right at 52 novellas per year;
  2. There is now an encyclopedia of Perry Rhodan;
  3. A bigger part of the series is now available electronically and if bought in bulk (50 or 100 novellas at a time) it’s rather inexpensive at Eu 1.25

I would not want to read Perry’s on the computer – maybe that was one of the reasons I never finished my free sample, but now that the Kindle is only $140, one hundred Perry’s plus the Kindle is about the same price as buying all the physical novellas.

hmmm…