[cschwan]

German here. I got addicted to it when, as a teenager, I saw them in our local library. The 3D covers of the "silver books" really got my attention! Inside they had, in addition to the story, extremely detailed cross sections of the space ships that occurred in the series. The dimensions and ideas the authors are really (in a positive way) crazy/gigantic. I also liked that the series was more or less one connected story. The authors regularly keep unsolved puzzles, just to explain them years later!

One day I found out that the newsstand on our train station sold current copies of the series and I was amazed by the fact that they already sold more than 2000 issues (Current edition is at ~ 2800)! The silver books I read before were actually just a streamlined version of ten or so issues. So I starting reading the "first edition", and also bought reprints ... in the end I think I read maybe half the the whole series, but two or so years ago I finally hadn't the time keep up.