Lemuria is a six novel Perry Rhodan miniseries first published from October 2004 through March 2005, with English translation f the first book in the series The Star Ark (also called Ark of the Stars) a year later. Only the first book was made available in print, and it wouldn’t be until 2015 that the entire series would be made available in English as eBook editions, which is the format I read, courtesy of Perry Rhodan Digital.
If you have never read Perry Rhodan before, then this miniseries is a good place to start, and if you have read the Ace books editions from the ‘70s (something I have done), then you will see that there is a substantial difference in tone and style of writing, and not because these were written by writers who came along decades after those early Rhodan adventures were originally published (Germany, 1961 to about 1964). Look at this miniseries like individual Star Trek episodes. You can jump into the miniseries and not be lost in where the history of the series is as this set of six novels were designed to be a standalone series. You don’t have to have read any Perry Rhodan adventures (my God, there’s currently over 3200 novella length booklets in the series) in order to understand what is going on, and the background of Perry Rhodan (the character) that you may need is nicely filled in, as is the character of Icho Tolot who has played a role in the mainline series for a number of years (and he was a new character for me).
The first book buls up with a mystery to be solved as Perry Rhodan, traveling on a mining exploration ship, runs into a cosmic storm, and one of the auxiliary craft is lost. What they find during their search is a clue that leads them to an interstellar generation ship that has been in flight for over 50,000 years. That’s the opener. There is some interesting twists and turns as Rhodan learns about the inhabitants in this Ark as it is referred to in the series, and we also see insights to the culture that has developed in this generation ship over the centuries (shipboard time as it is a dilation flight, travelling at close to the speed of light).
The story continues in the second book, The Sleeper of the Ages, as a second such generation ship is discovered, in which the culture had developed differently than on the first generation ship. The mysteries deepen as we find that the system, and planet that the bulk of this book takes place on is inhabited by strange energy beings. The Perry Rhodan series is great at coming up with all kinds of interesting, and sometimes bizarre, alien beings.
Then we hit the third novel, Exodus to the Stars, gives us more background on the Arks, why they were built, and about the war that was raised against the ancient Lemurians, as well as the Lemurian who built the generation ships. There is also a lot more going on in the star system it takes place in other than finding Ark number 2 and the strange energy beings, including one heck of a mysterious space station. Good stuff!
The fourth novel, The First Immortal, provides a lot of additional background on the arks as yet another generation ship is found, and it gets a bit weird as that third generation ship is really different on how it developed during its flight, but is important to read as some of it plays a significant role in the last two novels. Also, I think the writer of this fourth novel must have been a bit short on his word count as a couple of chapters seemed to me to be unneeded filler that didn’t serve any purpose other than word count. When you get to this book, you’ll probably figure out which parts I am referring to. But don’t skip this book as it has some events that are critical to the whole story arc in this miniseres.
Book 5, The Last Days of Lemuria provides a heck of a lot of background on Lemuria, as well as Levian Paronn, who is the driving force for much of the plot. It predominantly focuses on ancient Lemuria, focusing on the war with the Beasts, or, as the Beasts call themselves, The Righteous Ones of Time, who considers the Lemurians to be Time Criminals. It also focuses on Icho Tolot and his role he plays in the dilation flight of the Lemurian gneeration ships. Lots of action in this one, and darn well written.
The final installment, The Longest Night is an action-packed thriller as Rhodan and his team explore a Beast base on a remote planet that had a Lemurian Time-teleporter and some Beasts that have been in sleeper mode for over 50,000 years, and preparing to restart the war. There is a lot of mystery for a good chunk of the novel as Rhodan and his team explores the base that is slowly coming to life, and as the new Beast War begins to fire up on all cylinders.
Overall I found the Lemuria miniseries be a darn good read, with some fascinating alien and cultural developments, as well as some really good engineering on how generation ships could work, at least in regards to some current and near future technology, such as generating gravity for the inhabitants in these space craft using centrifugal force. The propulsion system is a bit far-fetched, but, hey, this is science fiction! It is also a good place to start reading Perry Rhodan, which is still the longest running science fiction series in print.
