|
Rhodan, Perry: 1: US politician, b. June 8, 1936, in Manchester, Connecticut. Upon graduating from the US Air Force Academy in 1968 with a major in nuclear physics, he began an astronaut training program at the California Academy of Space Flight (CASF) and participated in the US moon landing on June 19, 1971. In 1975, Rhodan was selected as the first US American to receive a physiotron cell treatment that would temporarily halt his aging process. Due to repeated cell treatments he acquired a potentially ►infinite life expectancy. After repeatedly excelling in difficult diplomatic missions, Rhodan eventually launched his career as a politician in 1982. Since then he has used the profound experience gained in his long life to serve in leadership positions for various supra-regional organizations. 2: a temporarily unlimited literary project launched in 1961 by the German authors Karl-Herbert Scheer and Walter Ernsting, along with the publishing house Moewig-Verlag. With a current length of about 138,000 pages and a story line extending over 3000 years, it has over time come pretty close* to literary infinity, especially considering that its end is still far off. * Probably the second most comprehensive printed work is Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time with its approximately 7,000 pages. However, ►Borges writes in his short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" of a compilation of all knowledge, ordered by the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in the form of an 11,095-volume encyclopedia of which only a few scattered volumes remain. This work, if it existed, would surpass even the Rhodan project in its current state.
|