Ohhh, someone mentioned Perry Rhodan!
To give you a short overview of this german space opera: It's the world's most successful science fiction book series ever written. Even if most of you never heard of it.
It is also the largest literary work in human history, not counting the Yongle Encyclopedia.
A very short and concise plot summary:
US astronaut Perry Rhodan discovers a stranded, gigantic spaceship crewed by an aphatic, degenerate human-like alien (the Arkonides) crew and convinces the few active, energetic aliens to help him prevent WW3, unite earth and uplift Terra into the interstellar space age.
Perry Rhodan helps the Arkonides on their quest for immortality by solving a galactic riddle created by an ancient civilization for reasons unknown. He eventually discovers the riddler - a near godlike disembodies super-intelligence going by the name of ES and is granted immortality along with people of his choice.
The Terrans eventually make contact with the gigantic Arkonide empire which is by know ruled by an artificial intelligence created for the eventuality that the Arkonide civilization degenerates to the point of collapse. To avoid being annexed by the empire, the terrans fake the destruction of their home planet.
Centuries (or decades ... forgot the timeline) the Robot Emperor of the Arkonide empire reestablishes contact with the Terrans to help him with a problem he "can't compute" - the intrusion of a parallel universe with a wildly different time-scale, which cuts of large parts of space and time-freezes them.
After resolving the crisis, Terrans and the Empire enter an uneasy peace.
Terrans encounter several lost and unknown empires in the yet unexplore parts of the galaxy, among them the Posbis (a race of feeling robots on a mission to eradicate all "false life", the isolationist technological advanced cousins of the Arkonids (dubbed Akons) who are capable of encasing their whole star system into a near impenetrable energy field, and the war-like Blues, whose ships forgo energy shields altogether in favor of a completely impenetrable armor of unknown origin. A resulting all-out war results in the complete destruction of one of the Arkonid home planets (they have three, all of them being artificially moved to the same orbit).
Explorers of the Solar Empire (the Terran empire of Grand Administrator Perry Rhodan) lead to the discovery of the Sun Hexagon - 6 identical suns arranged into a perfect hexagon. By accident they trigger the control station of the Sun Hexagon, which turns out to be a gigantic fleet transmitter, transporting the flagship of Perry Rhodan along with him to the 2.5 million light year distant androme galaxy.
They eventually discover the rulers of the andromeda galaxy, who not just mastered the manipulation of suns into matter transmitters, but also the perfect reduplication of matter (including humans), giving them an unending supply of troops and space ships, but also the secret of time travel and immortality.
Eventually they get defeated because Terrans figured out how to destroy whole suns by turning them into supernovae (with the unfortunate side-effect of interstellar fracticide), depriving the Masters of the Isle (that's how the immortal masters of andromeda refer to themselves) of their main tactical advantage as well of their production (duplication) capabilities.
Several intergalactic conflicts (andromeda was just the start) later, Terrans finally get a glimpse of a higher conflict brewing in the universe. The super-intelligence ES that granted Perry Rhodan immortality and heralded the age of Terra in the milky way galaxy is just one of many, who are involved in a millions of years old struggle between the forces of - let's say Order and Chaos - the Kosmokrats and the Chaotarchs. Each super-intelligence derives it's power from the essence of the people of their Zones of Influence - in the case of ES the Milky Way and Andromeda. And the closer they share the moral code with 'their' super-intelligence, the better.
And while ES mostly excerted it's influence unnoticed by the intelligent people of it's Zones, other super-intelligences act quite openly.
From here on the plot opens to the kosmology of the universe and the reasons and motives behind threats and conflicts transcend the mere standard motivations of greed, power, politics or ambition.
Just to give you a glimmer of the scope the Perry Rhodan universe tackles, here some major events in that universe:
OLD MAN - A small terran ship got trapped 50.000 years in the past during the conflict against the Masters of the Isle. They stranded on a planet inhabited by a hidden science enclave of the Lemurs - the direct ancestors of Terrans, Arkonids and all the other humanoid races. Being told of the future conflict between Terrans and the MotI they agree to help them in a truly long term project - the construction of a fully automated fleet of modern battleships along with a mobile fleet carrier of titanic proportions: A half-sphere with a diameter of 200 kilometers and a height of 100 km, along with a fleet of 15.000 battleships, each a sphere with a diameter of 2.5km.
However, OLD MAN appeared long after the conflict was over and the disembodied brains of the original crew have long since gone completely insane ...
The Swarm - a mobile mini galaxy that traveled into the milky way, emitting a radiation that severely hampers the thinking process of all intelligent beings. The inhabitants of the Swarm raid the helpless planets and even abduct some solar systems they particulary like.
The Endless Armada - A fleet of ships so numerous that the space it spans is measured by light years is on a millions of years long quest to find the Frost-Ruby, a cosmic artifact part of the DNA of the universe - and mistakingly traces it to the milky way. With the help of the Terrans they trace it's location to the Galaxy M-87 where it is defended by a negative super-intelligence which among other things used para-dimensional elements defying the laws of physics against it's enemies.
Tarkan - inhabitants of a dying universe attempt to save themselves by transferring their galaxy into our universe.
Thoregon - And alliance of super-intelligences attempts to build a region of space-time spanning dozens of galaxies which will be seperate from the direct influence of Kosmokrats and Chaotarchs ... because in the end, victory for either side will likely mean the end of intelligent life in the universe.
The technological evolution in the series is quite remarkable, especially given how it started. For example, in the early stages of the series contemporary computers were giant room-filling black boxes of arcane tech, who printed out their results on punch tape.
The first terran-built hyperspace capable ships had computers that printed their results on PLASTIC punch tape!!!
Kidding aside, the creativity involved in their future tech (especially weapon systems) is more than satisfactory. Start with beam weapons and solid energy shields, then go on to matter transporters dumping bombs directly at the target, which is shielded by force fields that dump excess energy simply into another dimension.
Introduce the continuum-cannon, which simply circumvents energy shields by ripping open the dimensional barriers in a narrow funnel through which you blast energy directly into the target. However, a Relativfield encases ships in an artificial micro-universe, effectively hiding it several seconds in the future where there is no harm.
Sometimes I wonder what stuff they are smoking when they come up with this.
These are concepts that KJA/BH seem to keep forgetting.
