It is funny to have two songs on this list with Lemmy as a vocalist. Lemmy from Motorhead. Lemmy with a voice like gravel combined with misaligned gears.
He was in Hawkwind – a band that has existed for 50 years with a rotating line up, styles changing all the time. I only really love two Hawkwind albums – The Chronicle of the Black Sword (about the Elric novels) and Quark, Strangeness and Charm.
Lemmy was booted out as his choice of drug was speed not weed. At least that was his story, the arrest going into Canada would not have helped, as it would have made touring the USA almost impossible.
Perry Rhodan is the Peacelord of the Universe. A real space opera series of books. Originally (and still being) published in Germany where they have gone past 2,600 volumes. The books started in 1961 and described a future history, commencing with a moon landing ten years later in 1971. It was set in a world where the USA, USSR and China were on the verge of a thermonuclear conflict (it was interesting to include China in this and this was written a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis).
(Perry Rhodan)
Rhodan and his crew find a crashed Arkonide space ship on the Moon. The ship is wrecked but it has a smaller shuttle ship on board (only 60 yards in diameter as opposed to the half mile diameter of the main ship). They return to Earth, set up their own state in the Gobi Desert and put a stop to armageddon. He gathers together a group of mutants (this precedes Marvel creating the X-Men) caused by radiation induced genetic structure changes, so most were Japanese – the teleporter Tako Kakuta, the doomed time traveller Ernst Ellert and a host of others.
Rhodan has a love/ hate relationship with one of the two Arkonide survivors, Thora – they eventually marry, in a revelation that did not surprise me even at the age of 12. After a few books they visit the star Vega and get caught in the middle of a massive invasion and their ship destroyed. In the space of around 500 pages Rhodan repels the invasion, obtains a replacement half mile wide Space Sphere (Stardust 2) and becomes a hero to the locals. He then embarks on a successful quest for eternal life before heading back to Earth to stave off nuclear armageddon again.
This is where I came in. In 1976 my parents had split up and I was on holiday in Norfolk with my mother, brother and my grandparents. We stopped in a village and Mum went to a newsagent while I sat in the car. Mum came back with a surprise. I had hoped she had someone found a Doctor Who book that I did not own (how she would have as I owned every single one that they had published and this was a newsagents in Hicksville, not a bookshop which may have a new one, did not occur to me).
It was not a Doctor Who book – it was Perry Rhodan 15 – Escape to Venus. I had no interest in reading it but I knew that would be rude not to so I reluctantly started it. By the end of the evening Perry had joined the Doctor and Mr Spock as one of the heroes of my youth and the rest of the holiday had me searching every bookshop we passed for more editions.
Luckily only 18 had been published in the UK and within weeks I had numbers 4-18. The first five were double length and nowhere could I find the first three. It was also odd as the fourth, Invasion From Space, hinted that the evil alien Mindsnatchers would be back soon as they were still on the Moon, yet never appeared (that book also has the heart rending story of Ernst Ellert being lost in time, presumably the writers realised a time travelling mutant could remove most of the peril from future books). Much later I discovered that when the books were translated in the USA they had skipped some stories that they considered less interesting.
There was a bookshop in Royston, where I lived – but it did not stock Rhodan (or Doctor Who books). Luckily in Newmarket, home of my mother and grandparents, they did have shops that stocked them. On my regular visits I would carefully search everywhere for them. Even better a trip to a big town like Cambridge or Stevenage would mean a better chance to find the latest edition.
I even spent our free day on scout camp in 1977 (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1814 ) searching Great Yarmouth for Rhodans – finding a couple. I read them out of order as I got them and would then read all I had in order to get the big picture.
Then they stopped at number 39. In the middle of a story (there were two to go before the end of the original 50 book arc, the other nine being the doubles and missed books). I was in limbo – no internet or way of getting news about what had happened. Searching market stalls I found the first three books eventually (I was buying all books second hand by the time I was 13 – loads more for your money).
That should have been it. Huge amounts of time passed – well it seemed huge to a 12/13 year old. Two years later for some reason we went shopping in Luton – to the Arndale Centre, I have no idea why (or why I went as I could have stayed at home – maybe seeing a shopping centre intrigued me as they were rare in those days). I went off on my own and wandered. Going outside was not an option, it looked rough (I was born in Luton but had we had moved away when I was four).
There was a market type area in the Arndale and I found a stall that had loads of Rhodans in the 50s, 60s and 70s. I did a deal with the stallholder but only managed to get a dozen and an Atlan book (a related series). They did not have whole runs so I just picked the ones with the best blurb. I realised that they were American and were way better than the British editions as they had extra stories in – reprints from the golden age of science fiction.
Now I had to find more. Every time the family was out I would look but none were to be found. Just after we moved to Brightlingsea in 1981 my father and stepmother took us to Southend (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2198 ). Not sure why as the move had been chaotic and there was lots to do to the house – for days we did not have a cooker and had to eat every meal out. My youngest sister, Frances, was not with us but Michael, Alison and I were given £5 each and told to go and amuse ourselves (at what I guess is now Adventure Island).
I was walking down to the seafront to play video games when I saw a remainders book shop. Usually these are just full of recent book failures at low prices, but I was time rich and cash poor and would assiduously search through every pile and shelf to find a gem (I used to hide books I wanted but could not afford at the back of the wrong section so it would still be there when I came back, I know others did the same thing as I could see the results of their handiwork in various places). Inside were loads more Rhodan books from around 45 up to 103. I managed to get all the ones I did not have for the £5 and was left with over 3 hours to sit and wait with no money. Who cared? I was in heaven.
(On the way home from that day out was the first time that I ever remembering having KFC – it is odd about what sticks in the memory).
I had around 80 books from the first up to 103. I managed to fill in the gaps in the story by hints in the ones I had, but that was the end of getting the range. Not that I stopped looking but no more seemed to be escaping the USA to come to the UK. The Rhodan books had been published up to around 137 in the USA before stopping.
My tastes were changing anyway, I recognised it as pulp space opera, maybe it was aimed at adults but it was not very scientific. Huge fun for an SF mad child/ young teen but not really for a serious minded older teen. Of course now that I am an adult I do not care what people think and will happily read tem again.
The invention of the internet and the wonders of mailing lists and torrents now mean that I have electronic copies of all the English Rhodan books, including the ones originally not translated (one has the wonderfully mad title of the Menace of Atomigeddon).
Rhodan is actually a bit of a fascist dictator when you look back on it, but he provided my imagination with great time as a child. The books are short and you may enjoy them if you try them…..
This is Hawkwind’s most famous track
Silver Machine
Five Miles Out 