Perry Rhodan is the serie my step father is addicted to. For almost thirty years I enjoyed reading the summary of what's going on in that epic opera pulp serialized piece of .. writings ? Or something. In the men's reading room of course.

I tried getting on the bandwagon when I was a teen, I read the first one and the ?th one (where we learn about Atlan) but there are way too many books to catch up with so I gave up.

I later discovered the germans where hundreds of books ahead of the french traduction so I googled it and found the whole cycle which is like 6 times the 150 books already translated. I am a bit sad my stepfather could die without reading the end.

I read the stories is a little bit shaped by real world social events (fall of the wall, cold war, hippies rise and fall, etc.) but I couldn't see it because reading a '73 book in 1999 makes it hard for a teen to see what is actually transposed in the book.

I can't comment on the S-F part though. From what I read it's really more like a low-key SF soap opera that is character driven (without much character development).

Nothing like `modern´ SF (Baxter, etc.). And not much science.