Kurt Brand (writer)

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Kurt Brand (* 10. May 1917 in Barmen , † 8. November 1991 in Caldaro , South Tyrol ) was a German science fiction - author . He also published under the pseudonyms CR Munro , Buster Brack , Conny Cuba , Cherry Moss , Lex Porter and Lars Torsten .

Life

Kurt Brand grew up in the small town of Rheinbach , where he attended high school, Jules Verne read and 1931/32 one on gelatin withdrawn student newspaper published that brought it on five issues. In his first science fiction story, appeared The white sun . At the age of 18 he offered his first novel, Motoren thunder zum Ziel , publishers, but it was rejected. His second book, Icebergs Fight the World , could not be printed due to the outbreak of war and the associated lack of paper.

During the Third Reich , Kurt Brand was a soldier in Peenemünde and was also involved in launching V2 rockets aimed at England . In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets.

After the war he went to Cologne in 1946 and built what he claims to be the largest private lending library with 24,000 volumes and became a freelance writer after the lending library was closed for financial reasons. During this time he wrote his first published science fiction novel, Towers of the Sahara , which was published by Anker Romanvertrieb in 1951. The sequel, Outdoor Station VII Explodes , was published in 1956 by Alka Verlag. In order to make ends meet, Kurt Brand wrote tons of westerns, crime novels and adventure novels under numerous pseudonyms. When his SF loan books were reprinted by Pabel and Moewig in their issue series, he began to write new texts for the two publishing houses. His other positions were Perry Rhodan , Ren Dhark and Spaceship Promet before he worked for crime series such as Fledermaus , Commissioner X and Jerry Cotton .

Kurt Brand died on November 8, 1991 after a serious illness at the age of 74 in his adopted home Kaltern in South Tyrol . He has written around 900 to 1000 novels, mostly in the field of magazine novels.

plant

In the 1950s Kurt Brand became known for his always fantastic, sometimes “crazy” individual novels for various loan book publishers . The mixture of crazy ideas, bizarre, often only hinted at, settings and a very idiosyncratic spelling - which in some cases cared little about the rules of German grammar - as it was typical for almost all of his works, met almost as often with vehement criticism as it was enthusiastic Approval. Critics also admitted to Brand that he always stood out clearly from the "uniformity" of German loaner books and notebooks.

In the period from 1951 to 1959 he wrote 21 science fiction novels and 128 novels in other genres, which were mainly westerns. Along with KH Scheer , Clark Darlton and WD Rohr, Kurt Brand is one of the pioneers of the German science fiction scene of the 1950s.

On April 27, 1962, he joined the Perry-Rhodan team. With Perry-Rhodan-Heft 34, Levtan, der Verräter he wrote his first of a total of 38 Perry-Rhodan-Hefts. There was also a paperback, Volume 3, Treasury of the Stars and Atlan Booklet 15, The Transmitter Trap . In 1965 he wrote his last Perry Rhodan novel with booklet 208, The Blue Rulers . On September 10, 1965, he separated from the publisher due to "disagreements". Other sources report a solid argument.

He then developed the Ren-Dhark series and offered it to Kelter Verlag . Kurt Brand wrote the synopsis and 53 of the 98 issues for the entire series. The name of the main character (Ron) Ren Dhark does not come from Kurt Brand, as is often wrongly claimed. The economic success was limited, which led to the early end of the series.

Kurt Brand then found a new home for his works with the Zauberkreis Verlag . At that time, this company was the only point of contact outside of Pabel's SF universe. During this time of reorientation Kurt Brand wrote more and more crime novels (including the concept of the utopian-fantastic crime series Checkpart 2000 for the Kelter-Verlag and also wrote a large part of the novels Jerry Cotton , Inspector X , Captain Morris , the six Ren-Dhark paperbacks, even vampire stories etc.) and reactivated his old pseudonym CR Munro for the science fiction area.

In 1971 Kurt Brand invented the SF series for the Cologne-based Andromeda Verlag (later: Astro Verlag), which became known as the spaceship Promet , but was officially titled “Arn Borul - From Star to Star”. He looked after her for about a year before falling out with the publisher and being replaced by SF author Hermann Peters. In addition, Brand wrote for the SF series Zeitkugel and Mondstation 1999 . Towards the end of the 1980s he finally reconciled with the Perry Rhodan authors and took part in the Perry Rhodan Worldcon, a fan meeting.

In TERRA-Kleinband 221 there is an author portrait of Kurt Brand, from which he is often quoted in the literature on science fiction authors:

"For me, SF means more than just adventurous events that are dressed in a modern guise. The age-old dream of mankind to step on strange stars and unveil their riddles is nearing fulfillment. But these great goals also require a new type of person who has to prove again and again that he is ultimately worth reaching the stars across space. "

- TERRA small tape 221

Perry Rhodan booklet novels (1962–1965)

  • 34: Levtan the Traitor (1962)
  • 42: Spaceship TITAN transmits SOS (1962)
  • 46: Business with Arkon-Stahl (1962)
  • 51: The Hunt for Life (1962)
  • 55: The Shadow of the Overhead (1962)
  • 67: Interlude on Siliko V (1962)
  • 71: Missing jump of the Tigris (1963)
  • 78: Thora's sacrifice (1963)
  • 83: Hello Topsid, please report! (1963)
  • 89: Pucky’s Big Hour (1963)
  • 90: Atlan in Need (1963)
  • 97: Price of Power (1963)
  • 98: Unleashed Violence (1963)
  • 103: The Plasma Beast (1963)
  • 109: The Blockade Ring around Lepso (1963)
  • 112: The Man with Two Faces (1963)
  • 114: Callers from Eternity (1963)
  • 123: Saboteurs in A-1 (1964)
  • 130: Volunteers for Frago (1964)
  • 132: The Power of the Eerie (1964)
  • 137: Storming the Galaxy (1964)
  • 138: Infinite Risk (1964)
  • 142: Agents of Annihilation (1964)
  • 148: Jump into the Intercosmos (1964)
  • 149: Battle for the Dog Sun World (1964)
  • 152: Bigger Than the Sun (1964)
  • 159: Pucky the Big Game Hunter (1964)
  • 164: Under the spell of the giant planet (1964)
  • 165: Terrania contact ship (1964)
  • 170: In the Jungle of Stars (1964)
  • 175: Race Against Time (1965)
  • 176: At the Last Minute (1965)
  • 185: Flames over Badun (1965)
  • 186: The Hypno Ball (1965)
  • 193: Panic in the Solar System (1965)
  • 199: Arkon's End (1965)
  • 204: The Drung (1965)
  • 208: The Blue Rulers (1965)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brand, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Munro, CR (pen name); Torsten, Lars (pseudonym); Brack, Buster (pseudonym); Cuba, Conny (pseudonym); Moss, Cherry (pseudonym); Porter, Lex (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1991
Place of death Kaltern