Perlenmann was an Earth Union and an official of the Outbound Operations Administration. The son of an English father and a German mother, he grew up in Munich, then went to school in Italy. As a young man, he was a professor of political science at Cambridge University. He insisted on using unabridged original works for study purposes, making him a "radical" in the eyes of officials. He was eventually sent to the Jupiter moon Callisto to served as the local administrator for the Outbound Operations Administration, overseeing the development and construction of Earth's interstellar colony ships.