"Secret Mission: Moluk (Perry Rhodan, No. 84)" by William Voltz
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Mission-Moluk-Perry-Rhodan/dp/B0007186ZS
Book number eighty-four of a series of one hundred and thirty-six space
opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets,
number in the thousands with several spinoffs. The English books
started with two translated German stories per book translated by
Wendayne Ackerman and transitioned to one story per book with the sixth
book. And then they transition back to two stories in book #109/110.
The Ace publisher dropped out at #118, so Forrest and Wendayne Ackerman published books #119 to #136 in pamphlets before stopping in 1978. The
German books were written from 1961 to present time, having sold two
billion copies and even recently been rebooted again. I read the well
printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1975 that I had to be
very careful with due to age. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I
lost my original Perry Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989. In fact, I
now own book #1 to book #106, plus the Atlan books, and some of the
Lemuria books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
BTW, this is actually book number 92 of the original German pamphlets
written in 1963. There is a very good explanation of the plot in German
on the Perrypedia German website of all of the PR books. There is
automatic Google translation available for English, Spanish, Dutch,
Japanese, French, and Portuguese.
https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Geheimmission_Moluk
There is alternate synopsis site at:
https://www.perryrhodan.us/summaries/92#
In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in their
1971. The first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third
stages were nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an
aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of
500. It has been over seventy years since then and the Solar Empire has flourished with tens of millions of people and many spaceships
headquartered in the Gobi desert, the city of Terrania. Perry Rhodan
has been elected by the people of Earth to be the World Administrator
and keep them from being taken over by the robot administrator of Arkon.
Perry Rhodan is desperately looking for alliances to help defend The
Terran Empire. The Solar Defense forces found documents in the house of Maatal that said that Molecular Deformer colonists were from Moluk. So
he and Alan Mercant send the space ship Mexico to the planet Moluk which
is 20,000 light years away from Earth. But, as usual, things start off
with a bang.
Two observations:
1. Forrest Ackerman should have put two or three of the translated
stories in each book. Having two stories in the first five books worked
out well. Just having one story in the book is too short and would
never allow the translated books to catch up to the German originals.
2. Anyone liking Perry Rhodan and wanting a more up to date story should
read the totally awesome "Mutineer's Moon" Dahak series of three books
by David Weber.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/
My rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 0.0 out of 5 stars (0 reviews)
Lynn
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