H.G. Ewers was the pen name of Horst Gehrmann, a German science fiction author. After working as a car salesman, he started to study medicine in Halle in 1956, but eventually became a high school teacher instead. He fled East Germany shortly before the Wall was erected, and in 1962 published his first novel, 'Intrige auf Chibbu'. Two years later, he wrote his first Perry Rhodan novel, and ended up writing several hundred issues for the franchise. In the 1990s, he decided to study medicine once more in Basel, Switzerland. He died at the age of 83 in 2013 in his adopted home town of Weil am Rhein.