The Adventures of Stefón Rudel (German: Die Abenteuer des Stefón Rudel) is a 2012 (?) self-published German sci-fi adventure novel by Stefan Knapp.
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- The '70s: The events of the novel take place in an alternate version of the decade.
- The Ace: Stefón builds androids, trains karate and marksmanship, wins every athletics competition in his age group, picks up several military ranks (and girls) and changes the course of history for the better - all as a child.
- Alternate History: History up to the seventies seems to have taken some different turns, with apparently a full nuclear war and first human settlements in space since the Second World War.
- Artistic License – Economics: One of Stefón's deeds is a generous donation to the rebuild of France consisting of several billion dollars in government bonds. The author doesn't seem to understand that this isn't really generous, since it means that Stefón wants the money back later. Plus interests.
- Artistic License – Law:
- The law in The 'Verse doesn't seem to prohibit selling alcohol to minors. The characters are seen buying and drinking alcohol several times, although they are children.
- Stefón and his friends also join the French Foreign Legion as eleven-year-olds. That would make them Child Soldiers and is illegal.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: After moving to "Itörnetie Plato 18", Stefan changes his name to the pseudo-French "Stefón". For the record, the actual French equivalent to Stefan is either Stéphane or Étienne.
- Author Avatar: Stefan is one for the author, with whom he shares his given name.
- Badass Creed: "Mars Centauri is great! Mars Centauri may live forever! Great is the star circle!"
- Beige Prose: Everything is described in a quite ornament-less manner.
- Big Eater: Dinochen, very much so. Maybe justified by Bizarre Alien Biology.
- Bizarre Alien Limbs: Dinochen, a female alien Stefón meets, has four arms.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Female breasts are called "Brötchen" note .
- Character Shilling: Stefan gets a lot of compliments and money during the plot - sometimes for barely doing something.
- Child Soldiers: Stefón and some others join the French Foreign Legion at eleven years of age. Nobody seems to have something against that.
- Cult Colony: Stefón visits the Colonia Dignidad, a Real Life example of this trope.
- Cute Monster Girl: Dinochen is an alien that looks like a little elephant walking upright with four arms.
- Dirty Kid: Stefón is seven years old and already staring at older girls' breasts. Later, he has his first time at eleven.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Among other things, Stefón bombs a weapon factory for supplying Africans. Supplying people with weapons is in the end the job of a weapon factory.
- Disproportionate Reward: Stefón is given two time machines for a rather small successful military operation. Later all students get a day off because of something he did.
- Doomed Hometown: Subverted. In the beginning, the Mars colony is attacked by something named Großraum Centauri, and implied to be destroyed. Nevertheless, said colony turns up again later in a quite good shape.
- Expy: Dinochen seems to have been intended as one of ALF, only female and with an extra pair of arms.
- The Full Name Adventures: The Adventures of Stefón Rudel
- Historical Domain Character: Jacqueline Kennedy and later Hans-Ulrich Rudel
serve as Stefan's adoptive parents. - Improbable Age: Over the course of the novel, Stefan enrolls in the "Mars Centauri", picks up numerous military ranks both on Earth and in space, and falls in love with several girls - all while only six years old.
- Insistent Terminology: For some reason, the planet Earth is usually referred to as "World-Earth". There's also a single reference to "Main-Earth", though how it differentiates from the former is unclear.
- Meaningful Rename: Stefan is given the new name Stefón and wants to be called by this name from then on.
- Nazi Grandpa: Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a WW2 Luftwaffe ace and real-life example of the trope, serves as Stefón's second Parental Substitute.
- Parental Abandonment: Subverted. Three-year-old Stefan is put into a life pod by his parents and dropped on Earth. He meets them again after years in the end.
- Polyamory: Stefón has several sexual relationships at the same time.
- Reset Button: Stefón tries to prevent the glassing of Brittany during the last war.
- Restaurant-Owning Episode: Stefón founds a hotel with a beer garden and android employees.
- Robot Girl: Stefón creates two of them out of android parts and names them Stefanie and Kiki. Luckily they do not also become part of his collection of girlfriends.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: The author seemingly doesn't know how to spell many foreign names (particularly English ones) correctly, and so instead resorts to using German phonetics, such as in the case of Itörnetie Plato 18.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Brittany region in France got glassed in the last nuclear war. Stefón travels to the past to avert this.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Stefón manages to avert the nuclear attack on Brittany by sending letters basically just asking not to bomb Brittany to several important people in America in the past.
- Time Travel: Stefón gets his hands on two time travel devices named Korrekturuhren (correction clocks) and travels back in time with them.
- Troll Fic: Believed by many reviewers to be one. Most notably, blogger Christian Richter commented in his review of the novelnote that it reads like it's written by a child raised on old Flash Gordon comics, war films, military magazines, and German adult humor.
- Vacation Episode: Stefón goes on vacation with his girlfriends several times.
