"The Atom Hell of Grautier (Perry Rhodan #71)"

"The Atom Hell of Grautier (Perry Rhodan #71)"
    https://www.amazon.com/Perry-Rhodan-Atom-Hell-Grautier/dp/044166055X/
Book number seventy-one of a series of one hundred and thirty-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 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 79 of the 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/Die_Atomh%C3%B6lle_von_Gray_Beast
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 building a huge fleet of 1,200 space ships around the hidden Terran base at the Grautier planet for attacking the Arkonide Robot Regent.  But the Terran battle cruiser Rigel had its FTL transition compensator fail and the Terran base on Grautier was exposed to the Arkonides.  An Arkon robot battle group shows up and bombs Grautier with Arkon bombs that start an unextinguishable nuclear fire which destroys the planet.  But, Perry Rhodan and his entire command staff are on the planet.
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:  5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  5 out of 5 stars (1 reviews)
Lynn