Perry Rhodan cover gallery part 4

The last episode of our gallery of old 1970s SF covers from the Perry Rhodan paperback series published by Futura.

Angus McKie + original artwork

Peter Jones

Peter Jones

Angus McKie + original artwork

Colin Hay?

Peter Jones

Colin Hay

Colin Hay?

Peter Jones

I'm pretty sure the series ended here, in 1978; the American editions—from which the UK editions were derived (translated by Wendyne Ackerman)—had already come to an end a year earlier, although the series had advanced much further, with nearly 140 books appearing (some in magazine format). In Germany, where the series originally began in 1961, the 2,400th book appeared in August 2007 and the series continues to appear to this day at the rate of around 40 new books a year.

More about Perry Rhodan at Wikipedia. When I was looking up a link to point readers to second-hand copies of the books, I stumbled across a new translation that has appeared within the last couple of years. Star Ark appeared in 2006, translated by Dwight R. Decker and published by Fanpro (ISBN 978-1932564884). Given the lack of any further new titles, one has to conclude that it was a failed experiment.

(* And that's it for Perry Rhodan... I'm now feeling completely nostalgic for those old 1970s British paperback covers. Thanks to Chris Foss, Tony Roberts, Colin Hay, Peter Elson, Peter Jones, Angus McKie and all the other artists who bolted atomic engines to giant dustbins. Drooling over the covers led me to reading a huge number of different SF authors back in the 1970s and 1980s. That and the naked women on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels... but that's another story entirely.)