Friday, July 4, 2025

Perry Rhodan Lemuria II: The Sleeper of the Ages

 https://youtu.be/h5IaQF7hvTY?si=96WMde3-KfmySkJI


I continue my read of the Perry Rhodan Lemuria mini-series this time going into the second novel of the 6 novel series.

Friday, June 27, 2025

Perry Rhodan Lemuria I: The Space Ark

 


We start the Perry Rhodan Lemuria mini-series. I discuss the first novel, you can also read the written review posted earlier this week!

https://youtu.be/s7If1Yj4pLc?si=VhyVZMe25WfUPJzD

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: The Star Ark

 Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: The Star Ark


The Star Ark was published in 2004 and translated into English in 2005.  It is a novel set in the German Perry Rhodan universe, and for more information on that, I’m going to refer you to my prior review and the videos on the topic. 


The Star Ark is set thousands of years in the future. The premise of the miniseries is that many of the humanoid races of the galactic supercluster, including our own, can trace their ancestry to Lemuria.  Lemuria was an advanced civilization that developed on Earth over 50,000 years ago. They spread out to the stars and built a mighty empire that stretched across the galaxy,  until they ran into an alien species that didn’t care for that. These aliens decided to correct this with just a touch of civilization-ending genocide.  


The Lemurians were able at the last minute to neutralize their attackers, basically using a weapon that turned them from bloodthirsty killers to placid thinkers, but it was too late for their civilization.  Lemuria collapsed, with survivors hidden across several galaxies that would evolve into their own societies.  Among them were scattered survivors on the Lemurian homeworld, Earth, who would become the race that is referred to as Terrans in the novel. 


Perry Rhodan by this time is an immortal who doesn’t seem to be directly governing humanity, which is wise of him I think. However, he does seem to be a rather powerful and influential guy, because he is taking a ship out to a remote part of a far-away chunk of space seeking to make direct, under-the-table contact with an alien race.  The Akonians are a group of humans who survived the fall of Lemuria and developed on a colony world that the enemy missed. Relations between them and the Terrans are tense, and Perry would like to tone down the tension, as he thinks a war would be an awful waste--which is also wise of him, I think. 


Perry manages to make contact, but in a rather tense way, because they both discover an active Lemurian generation ship traveling at relativistic speed.  This is an important cultural and scientific artifact for both sides, and it’s made more complicated by the fact that there are living, breathing Lemurians on this ship.  The greater political and scientific ramifications of this discovery aren’t covered in this novel, however, as a good part of the novel is taken up with what is going on inside the generation ship. 


The generation ship is a place of limited resources and space, and because of that the Lemurians have created a very controlled society. Most of their energy is focused on maintaining the ship and raising their food supply.  These people also live in terror of being discovered or making contact with the greater universe.  They have for generations now been told that outside of the ship is the domain of monsters that seek to destroy them. So most Lemurians just focus on living day to day and doing what they’re told. 


However, there are those who yearn for something more, who seek to just see the stars that they know are right outside the hull of their ship.  These Starseekers are an oppressed group because everyone else thinks that, if they pop out of the ship to look around, they could bring monsters out of a nightmare on their heads. However, that doesn’t stop one of them, named Venro, from mapping out a route to a shuttle bay and hijacking a shuttle, accidentally killing a couple dozen of the enforcers on his way out.  It’s this shuttle that’s going to lead Perry and Akonians to the ship, so in a way, I suppose, the leaders of the generation ship are right.  


However, that is less of a concern to Denetree, Venron's sister and a fellow Starseeker.  After Venron’s escape, there is a crackdown on the Stargazers; everyone who is part of the group is arrested and will be put to death.  So Denetree, with some help from various people as well as something Venron left behind for her, is in hiding and trying to avoid being arrested and executed.  This gives us a pretty good view of the lower rungs of Lemurian society.  


We have people who are basically field hands, who spend all day on the outer decks where the gravity is highest, working to grow crops to feed the ship.  We also have bands that are moving along the ship's pipes and service vents, patching air leaks, and doing manual repairs with the most primitive tools they can manage. This also gives us a good look at the state of the ship itself, and it’s not a good state. 


The ship is experiencing a slower elapsed time due to time dilation, an effect where the closer you get to light speed, the slower time passes for you. However, it's still been flying for thousands of years.  Parts of the computer network have broken down to the point that they are wiping data from functioning memory cores to transcribe the information they need to keep the ship running.  Some parts cannot be replaced anymore, almost all the security cameras have broken down, and in the unused parts, the power is fading.  While the situation isn’t dire…yet,  this is clearly a machine on its last legs, and the novel ensures you feel the decline and decay.


It’s into this situation that Perry Rhodan, a group of Terran prospectors, and Akonian scientists walk into and upend the Lemurians' entire world.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the state of that world, but the Terrans and Akonians are also bringing their politics and rivalries into this, and that could prove disastrous for everyone. 


I enjoyed this novel; both the Akonians and Terrans were given coverage, and I wasn’t left feeling like this was a confrontation between good guys and bad guys but rather between two rival cultures.  Both cultures have good and bad points to them, which felt very realistic. The writers weren’t afraid to make some Akonians more sympathetic than some of the Terrans and vice versa, so both crews feel like people.  


Also, the Lemurians feel very human; their leaders are not thrilled about hunting down the Stargazers but steadfastly believe that if they don’t, they’re putting everyone at risk.  The leader of the ship even puts the man most skeptical of the necessity in charge of the hunt to try and ensure that as many innocent people as possible are spared, even if that means risking one or two Stargazers escaping.  This actually had me wondering what I would do in that situation, where I knew that this group, while not malicious, would get us all killed if I didn’t stop them.  That makes for slightly uncomfortable but good reading in my mind, and it’s good that we have fiction that makes us stop and ask ourselves what we might be capable of. 


If you have some prior knowledge of Perry Rhodan, or if you think you’re quick enough on the uptake to follow along, this is a fun and somewhat interesting read. The writers took into account the idea of how a ship spinning to generate gravity would create different environments in the ship and how the speed would affect the experience of time.  It’s always good to see that level of thought in science fiction.  They were also able to create characters that feel and act human, even though not all of them are from Earth.  I’ll be going through the entire series and giving it a single grade at the end.  So I hope you follow along with me. 


I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did consider joining my ever-wise patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on upcoming topics for video and text reviews as well as watch patron-only videos.  Thank you for reading. 


Friday, June 20, 2025

Perry Rhodan Neo (Vol I)

 https://youtu.be/ncZbnTF-vPI?si=TbQsEXcw9M5U0RqN

We look at the modern reimaging of the long-running German science fiction series Perry Rhodan. Perry Rhodan Neo.

Friday, June 13, 2025

Perry Rhodan Introduction

Our next step in examining Lemuria in popular culture is taking a look at a German science fiction series, which in fact may be the single longest running science fiction universe still in print... Let's introduce ourselves to the Perry Rhodan universe.

https://youtu.be/HMu9a2aBO1Y?si=w_gbNgavyH_rInJK

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Perry Rhodan Volume I: Stardust Enterprise By K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting

 Perry Rhodan Volume I: Enterprise Stardust

By K. H. Scheer and  Walter Ernsting 

 


In 1961, a rather pulpish story was published in novella form in West Germany; it would turn out to be the first issue in a series that has run without stopping to this very day.  There are over 3000 individual issues, and it has been published across the entire world.  We’re talking about the space opera series Perry Rhodan, and today we will review the first novel in the series, Stardust Enterprise. 


The book takes place in the then-future year of 1971, where the West Block, led by the United States, is facing off against a fading Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and a rising Asian Federation created by the combination of India and the People’s Republic of China. Cold War tensions are incredibly high, and the world feels like it’s right on the edge of doomsday. The United States is just barely ahead of the Asian Federation in the Space Race and is sending its first manned expedition to the Moon. 


This expedition is led by our title character, Major Perry Rhodan of the US Space Force.  While the liftoff is a success and the ship, named the Stardust, reaches the moon, things quickly go wrong.  While orbiting the moon, their communications with Earth are jammed, and they are forced to land on the moon, miles away from their original landing site.  Worse, it’s on the far side of the moon, so until they lift off, they cannot reestablish communications with Earth, which leads everyone to assume that they crashed and are all dead. 


They did survive, however, and quickly concluded that what happened could only be the result of outside meddling. At first, they blame the Asian Federation, as there was supposed to be an Asian ship launched after theirs, but the crew assumes that it’s very possible that the Asian Federation simply lied. After repairing their ship, Perry and one of the crewmen, Reginald Bell, head out to where they can establish contact with Earth, but a green energy ray destroys their communications antenna.  They follow it back to the source to find an alien ship that has landed on our moon. 

Perry deduces that these aliens could have killed them at any time, but didn’t, so they might be open to talking things out.  He happens to be right here. These aliens, called Arkonides, are an incredibly ancient race that once controlled large chunks of the galaxy.  Their civilization is in a terrible decline, as most of them are addicted to digital entertainment, they call Sims and cannot tear themselves away from their screens long enough to effect even minor repairs.  Worse, the leader of the expedition, a scientist named Crest, is dying from a strange disease. 


Perry then strikes a deal to aid the Arkonides and to attempt to treat Crest’s illness in exchange for their technology.  However, there’s an additional problem.  Perry realizes that if he brings the alien tech, which is over a thousand years more advanced than ours, to the United States, the Soviets and the Asians will launch their nuclear weapons to prevent the US from leaping thousands of years ahead of them.  On the flip side, if he brings his tech to either the Asians or the Soviets, the others will launch for the same reasons!  So Perry decides the rational thing to do is to use the alien technology as a threat to force humanity to unify under a single banner. 


To this end, Perry lands the ship in the Gobi Desert and demonstrates the alien technology on the Asian military.  He chose the Gobi because he didn’t think he could bear to use it on his fellow Americans, even to prevent WWIII.  The Asians, however, are convinced this is a dirty Western trick and the world is brought near to Armageddon.  This, though, is also part of Perry’s plan.  


Because one of the devices that the Arkonides have is something that can prevent fission or fusion bombs from going off.  There are also other terrifying weapons, including one that negates gravity completely in a set area, and a weapon that allows someone to force anyone in range to follow the instructions of the weapon holder. I personally find that last one terrifying, and the sheer casualness that the crewmembers of the Stardust demonstrate in waving that around was very alarming to me. 

This plan does work, and when the Great Powers find that World War III is cancelled, they agree to meet in Cairo to build a common coalition-- against Perry Rhodan and the crew of the Stardust. Meanwhile, the crew and a doctor they’ve recruited have figured out that Crest’s disease is a lot like leukemia. Conveniently, they discovered a cure for leukemia that they refer to as a serum. (I've got to say I really wish we had a serum that could cure even a single form of cancer.)  


I found the story interesting, even if it is a product of its time.  The characterizations of everyone are rather thin, but part of that is because there just isn’t space to cover both the plot and provide really deep characterization.  The premise, however, really caught me and kept me going.  It helps that my copy of the novel came in at 184 pages, which made it hard to overstay its welcome. That said, there are very characters that get any real depth outside of Perry Rhodan himself here, most of them will have a single overriding character trait or two. Perry is also very much the center of this universe. 


Some old-fashioned elements bothered me, though. For example, Crest declares that his species is suffering from physical and mental degeneration and decadence brought about by the species simply being too old.  I have to admit that it’s hard for 21st-century me to believe this since I would think any species with their kind of scientific knowledge would understand enough of their genetic code to find a solution.  


Honestly, the addiction to entertainment rings way more true to me, since I can see that in the real world. Screen addiction is a real thing, and not too long ago, I read a study that tracked teen pregnancy correlated to the release of handheld video games.  The writer then stated that the Game Boy might have been the greatest contraceptive humanity has ever invented. 


I also didn’t care for the hand-waving of the very real differences between the great powers.  Perry grandly declared that ideological differences don’t matter when, well, they very much do, at least in my opinion.  I have no desire to live under an authoritarian system that controls what I read, what I watch, or what I’m allowed to say or write.  Nor do I have any desire to live anywhere where unelected appointees decide everything for me.  That said, I can’t imagine that citizens of the People's Republic of China have a high opinion of democracy, or that they have any desire to live under a system like that of the US, the UK, France, or even Japan.  I would be utterly opposed to giving the Communist Party of China any say in how I live my life, and that’s the unsolvable problem, because coming under a one-world government with dictatorships and oligarchies would mean surrendering freedoms. Also, I kinda have to point out that it’s easy for Perry to say this when he’s holding the only weapons that matter.


These arguments aside, it’s a fun read if you’re willing to put up with 1960s writing, and there are a lot of interesting ideas being played with.  Unfortunately, it would be very hard to catch up to the main series, and a lot of those books were never translated into English as English publishers felt that the stories weren’t mature enough for their audience, never mind that the books that were translated into English actually sold very well. There is, however, the modern remake of Neo Perry Rhodan, and I’ll be trying out volume I next week. 


I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did consider joining my ever-wise patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on upcoming topics for video and text reviews as well as watch patron-only videos.  Thank you for reading. 


Friday, June 6, 2025

Lost Tales of Lemuria: Mountains of Moran

 To get a more modern view on how Lemuria is treated, let's look at a graphic novel printed in the 21st century from the Netherlands, presenting Lost Tales of Lemuria. 

https://youtu.be/EoFUA4RM1q4CN089303637JP