"Realm of the Tri-planets (Perry Rhodan #31)" by K. H. Scheer,
translated by Wendayne Ackerman
https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Tri-planets-Perry-Rhodan-31/dp/4141660140/

Book number thirty-one of a series of one hundred and twenty-six space
opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets,
number in the thousands. The English books started with two translated
German stories per book and transitioned to one story per book with the
sixth book. 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 1973 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 #103, plus the Atlan books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

BTW, this is actually book number 39 of the German Pamphlets. There is
a very good explanation of the plot in German on this 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/Die_Welt_der_drei_Planeten

In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow
astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in 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 ten years since then and the New Power has
flourished with millions of people and many spaceships headquartered in
the Gobi desert, the city of Terrania.

Perry Rhodan uses his new Springer built space warship, a cylinder 2,500
foot long by 600 foot wide that he named the Ganymede, to fulfill his
long term promise to take Khrest and Thora back to the planet Arkon. It
has been thirteen long years since Khrest and Thora left Arkon,
searching for the planet of eternal life. But Arkon is not the place
that it once was. And somebody else is running Arkon, that somebody is
a huge computer.

Perry's new spaceship has been captured and towed to Arkon by tractor
beams and locked down to a spaceport field. Thora meets with some of
her relatives who help Rhodan to escape by joining an Arkonide fleet in
a brand new 5,000 foot diameter spherical warship. Perry and his men
steal the new spaceship, liberate the Ganymede, and escape the Arkon
system with the computer brain minions desperately searching for them.
And Perry has learned the secret of the Arkon system, there are actually
three planets of Arkon, a residential planet, a business planet, and a
war materials planet upon which the new computer brain is on.

One has to remember that this book was written in German in 1962 and
translated to English in 1973. Many items that came about in the 1970s
and beyond such as cell phones are not reflected in the book. However,
commercial aircraft commonly traveling at Mach 3 are not available to
the public as talked about in the book. Niels Bohr's saying "Prediction
is very difficult, especially about the future" comes to mind.

Two observations:
1. The publisher should have put two to four 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: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars (3 reviews)

Lynn

Among the things Lynn McGuire wrote:
> "Realm of the Tri-planets (Perry Rhodan #31)" by K. H. Scheer,
> translated by Wendayne Ackerman
> https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Tri-planets-Perry-Rhodan-31/dp/4141660140/
>
> Book number thirty-one of a series of one hundred and twenty-six space
> opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets,
> number in the thousands.
>
> BTW, this is actually book number 39 of the German Pamphlets. There is
> a very good explanation of the plot in German on this 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/Die_Welt_der_drei_Planeten
>
> Perry Rhodan uses his new Springer built space warship, a cylinder 2,500
> foot long by 600 foot wide that he named the Ganymede, to fulfill his
> long term promise to take Khrest and Thora back to the planet Arkon. It
> has been thirteen long years since Khrest and Thora left Arkon,
> searching for the planet of eternal life. But Arkon is not the place
> that it once was. And somebody else is running Arkon, that somebody is
> a huge computer.
>
> Perry's new spaceship has been captured and towed to Arkon by tractor
> beams and locked down to a spaceport field. Thora meets with some of
> her relatives who help Rhodan to escape by joining an Arkonide fleet in
> a brand new 5,000 foot diameter spherical warship. Perry and his men
> steal the new spaceship, liberate the Ganymede, and escape the Arkon
> system with the computer brain minions desperately searching for them.
> And Perry has learned the secret of the Arkon system, there are actually
> three planets of Arkon, a residential planet, a business planet, and a
> war materials planet upon which the new computer brain is on.

Dang! I'd been meaning to get a copy of this book from somewhere and
read it before your review. In addition to seeing how much I could
understand coming in in the middle, I've an idiosyncratic reason.

The UK edition of the book used cover art by Angus McKie:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1857014
This cover was collected with others by McKie and other spaceship artists
of similar style for a spaceship porn book.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?273436
The illustration has descriptive text classifying it in their created universe
as a three-crew interceptor. The book is light on specifications, so I was
wondering if I could get ideas on the size of small craft in the original.

You might notice that the cover of the Spacecraft art book also features
these fighters. As far as anyone knows and has reported to Isfdb, it was
commissioned for this book, but now I'm wondering if it was an alternate
for Perry, with the larger ship being the 2,500 foot cylinder.

--
-Jack