A. Bertram Chandler
Encyclopedia
Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 – 6 June 1984) was a British-Australian science fiction author. He also wrote under the pseudonyms George Whitley, George Whitely, Andrew Dunstan, and S.H.M.
He was born in Aldershot
, Hampshire, England. He was a merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troopships. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and became an Australian citizen. He commanded various ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies
, and was the last master of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne as the law required that it have an officer on board while it was laid up waiting to be towed to China to be broken up.
Chandler's daughter, Jenny Chandler, married British horror fiction writer Ramsey Campbell
.
s for the short story The Bitter Pill (in 1971) and for three novels False Fatherland (in 1969), The Bitter Pill (in 1975), and The Big Black Mark (in 1976).
Chandler's descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew en route carry a feeling of realism rarely found in other writers, and obviously derive from his experience on board seagoing ships. Chandler's principal hero, Grimes, is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets. In the books, there is a repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the "Gauss
jammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" – which is obviously modelled on the Windjammer
.
The less well-known The Deep Reaches of Space (1964) has undisguised autobiographical elements in having as its protagonist a seaman turned science-fiction writer who travels to the future and uses his nautical experience to save a party of humans stranded on an alien planet.
Chandler's Australian background is manifested in his depiction of a future where Australia becomes a major world power on Earth and Australians take the lead in space exploration and the settlement of other planets. Drongo Kane, a piratical captain who is the villain in several books, comes from the planet Austral, and other books also mention the planet Australis in another part of the galaxy.
His story "The Mountain Movers" (part of John Grimes' early career) includes the song of future Australian space adventurers, sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda
, with the first stanza running:
The colonists who sing the song end up re-enacting the darker part of Australian history and dispossessing the natives of the planet Olgana – humanoids who resemble the Australian Aborigines
. As revealed at the climax of the story, the resemblance is not accidental.
Chandler made heavy use of the parallel universe
plot device throughout his career, with many Grimes stories involving characters briefly crossing over into other realities. In "The Dark Dimensions", which is set at a point in space where various realities meet, Grimes (the Rim World Commodore), meets not only another John Grimes who is still in the Federation Survey Service, but also the characters from the Empress Irene books and Poul Anderson
's Dominic Flandry
.
In his ironic short story "The Cage", a band of shipwrecked humans wandering naked in the jungles of a faraway planet are captured by aliens and placed in zoo (where some get dissected), failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent. Finally they become resigned to captivity, adopt a small local rodent as a pet and place him in a wicker cage – seeing which, their captors apologise for the mistake and repatriate them to Earth. It turns out that Only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages...
In his 1984 novel Kelly Country Chandler explored an alternate history, in which the bushranger Ned Kelly
was not captured and hanged, but led a rebellion, ultimately becoming the president of an Australian republic, which degenerated into a hereditary dictatorship
.
Sex frequently takes place in Chandler books, delightfully often in free fall. Women on board are typically purser
s or passengers; far less often are they regular officers in the chain of command. (Sonia Verril, before finally settling down with Grimes, was on one memorable occasion the Captain's Mate in both meanings of the word). Chandler's protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behaviour, but are also capable of falling deeply in love and of long-lasting bonding and happy, harmonious marriages. Relationships are invariably described from the male point of view; women characters might be very sympathetic, but are always seen from the outside.
In the early "Bring Back Yesterday" (1961), the dashing Johnnie Petersen manages to get involved with no less than four women in the course of a single book, whose plot lasts no more than a few weeks. Of them, one is an utter bitch who hurts him deeply; one is kindly and motherly, but he is not physically attracted to her; one is a short chance encounter (in space) which soon ends with no lasting positive or negative trace; and the last is the one and only great love of his life, and he manages to change time itself in order to save her from gruesome death and live with her happily ever after.
1 Short Story Collection
1Short Story Collection
He was born in Aldershot
Aldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
, Hampshire, England. He was a merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troopships. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and became an Australian citizen. He commanded various ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies
Merchant Navy
The Merchant Navy is the maritime register of the United Kingdom, and describes the seagoing commercial interests of UK-registered ships and their crews. Merchant Navy vessels fly the Red Ensign and are regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency...
, and was the last master of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne as the law required that it have an officer on board while it was laid up waiting to be towed to China to be broken up.
Chandler's daughter, Jenny Chandler, married British horror fiction writer Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell
John Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction author.Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", while S. T...
.
Writings
Chandler wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction. He was most well known for his John Grimes novels and for the Rim World series, which have a distinctly naval flavour. He won Ditmar AwardDitmar Award
The Ditmar Award has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction and science fiction fandom...
s for the short story The Bitter Pill (in 1971) and for three novels False Fatherland (in 1969), The Bitter Pill (in 1975), and The Big Black Mark (in 1976).
Chandler's descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew en route carry a feeling of realism rarely found in other writers, and obviously derive from his experience on board seagoing ships. Chandler's principal hero, Grimes, is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets. In the books, there is a repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the "Gauss
Gauss
Gauss may refer to:*Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist*Gauss , a unit of magnetic flux density or magnetic induction*GAUSS , a software package*Gauss , a crater on the moon...
jammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" – which is obviously modelled on the Windjammer
Windjammer
A windjammer is the ultimate type of large sailing ship with an iron or for the most part steel hull, built to carry cargo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century...
.
The less well-known The Deep Reaches of Space (1964) has undisguised autobiographical elements in having as its protagonist a seaman turned science-fiction writer who travels to the future and uses his nautical experience to save a party of humans stranded on an alien planet.
Chandler's Australian background is manifested in his depiction of a future where Australia becomes a major world power on Earth and Australians take the lead in space exploration and the settlement of other planets. Drongo Kane, a piratical captain who is the villain in several books, comes from the planet Austral, and other books also mention the planet Australis in another part of the galaxy.
His story "The Mountain Movers" (part of John Grimes' early career) includes the song of future Australian space adventurers, sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
, with the first stanza running:
-
- "When the jolly Jumbuk lifted from Port WoomeraWoomera Test RangeThe RAAF Woomera Test Range is a weapons testing range operated by the Royal Australian Air Force Aerospace Operational Support Group...
- Out and away for Altair Three
- Glad were we all to kiss the tired old Earth goodbye
- Who'll come a-sailing in Jumbuk with me?"
- "When the jolly Jumbuk lifted from Port Woomera
The colonists who sing the song end up re-enacting the darker part of Australian history and dispossessing the natives of the planet Olgana – humanoids who resemble the Australian Aborigines
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
. As revealed at the climax of the story, the resemblance is not accidental.
Chandler made heavy use of the parallel universe
Parallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
plot device throughout his career, with many Grimes stories involving characters briefly crossing over into other realities. In "The Dark Dimensions", which is set at a point in space where various realities meet, Grimes (the Rim World Commodore), meets not only another John Grimes who is still in the Federation Survey Service, but also the characters from the Empress Irene books and Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories...
's Dominic Flandry
Dominic Flandry
Dominic Flandry is the central character in the second half of Poul Anderson's Technic History science fiction. He first appeared in 1951.The space opera series is set in the 31st century, during the waning days of the Terran Empire...
.
In his ironic short story "The Cage", a band of shipwrecked humans wandering naked in the jungles of a faraway planet are captured by aliens and placed in zoo (where some get dissected), failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent. Finally they become resigned to captivity, adopt a small local rodent as a pet and place him in a wicker cage – seeing which, their captors apologise for the mistake and repatriate them to Earth. It turns out that Only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages...
In his 1984 novel Kelly Country Chandler explored an alternate history, in which the bushranger Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly
Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...
was not captured and hanged, but led a rebellion, ultimately becoming the president of an Australian republic, which degenerated into a hereditary dictatorship
Family dictatorship
A hereditary dictatorship, or family dictatorship, in political science terms a personalistic regime, is a form of dictatorship that occurs in a nominally or formally republican regime, but operates in practice like an absolute monarchy, in that political power passes within the dictator's family...
.
Sex frequently takes place in Chandler books, delightfully often in free fall. Women on board are typically purser
Purser
The purser joined the warrant officer ranks of the Royal Navy in the early fourteenth century and existed as a Naval rank until 1852. The development of the warrant officer system began in 1040 when five English ports began furnishing warships to King Edward the Confessor in exchange for certain...
s or passengers; far less often are they regular officers in the chain of command. (Sonia Verril, before finally settling down with Grimes, was on one memorable occasion the Captain's Mate in both meanings of the word). Chandler's protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behaviour, but are also capable of falling deeply in love and of long-lasting bonding and happy, harmonious marriages. Relationships are invariably described from the male point of view; women characters might be very sympathetic, but are always seen from the outside.
In the early "Bring Back Yesterday" (1961), the dashing Johnnie Petersen manages to get involved with no less than four women in the course of a single book, whose plot lasts no more than a few weeks. Of them, one is an utter bitch who hurts him deeply; one is kindly and motherly, but he is not physically attracted to her; one is a short chance encounter (in space) which soon ends with no lasting positive or negative trace; and the last is the one and only great love of his life, and he manages to change time itself in order to save her from gruesome death and live with her happily ever after.
Rim World series
- The Rim of Space (1961)
- Beyond the Galactic Rim1 (1963)
- The Ship From Outside (1963)
- Rendezvous on a Lost World (vt When the Dream Dies) (1961)
- Bring Back Yesterday (1961)
- Catch the Star Winds (1969)
1 Short Story Collection
John Grimes novels
The John Grimes story is divided into three parts – Early, Middle and Late.- Early Grimes – These cover Grimes Survey' Service career, from Ensign to Commander.
- The Road To The Rim (1967)
- To Prime The Pump (1971)
- The Hard Way Up1 (1972)
- The Broken Cycle (Robert Hale: 1975/Daw: 1979)
- Spartan Planet (vt False Fatherland [Horwitz: 1968]) (Dell: 1969)
- The Inheritors (1972)
- The Big Black Mark (1975)
- Middle Grimes – All these deal with Grimes' life and hard times subsequent to his resignation from the Federation Survey Service and prior to his becoming a citizen of the Rim Worlds Confederacy.
- The Far Traveller (Robert Hale: 1977/Daw: 1979)
- Star Courier (1977)
- To Keep The Ship (Robert Hale: 1978/Daw: 1978)
- Matilda's Stepchildren (Robert Hale: 1979/Daw: 1983)
- Star Loot (Daw: 1980/Robert Hale: 1981)
- The Anarch Lords (1981)
- The Last Amazon (1984)
- The Wild Ones (Paul Collins: 1984/Daw: 1985)
- Late Grimes – Grimes, Rim World Commodore
- Into The Alternate Universe (1964)
- Contraband From Other Space (1967)
- The Gateway to Never (1972)
- The Rim Gods1 (1969) (see online text)
- Alternate Orbits1 (vt The Commodore at Sea) (1971)
- The Dark Dimensions (1971)
- The Way Back (Robert Hale: 1976/Daw 1978)
1Short Story Collection
Empress Irene series
- Empress of Outer Space (1965)
- Space Mercenaries (1965)
- Nebula Alert (1967)
Other novels
- The Hamelin Plague (1963)
- The Deep Reaches of Space (1964)
- Glory Planet (1964)
- The Coils of Time (1964)
- The Alternate Martians (1965)
- The Sea Beasts (1971)
- The Bitter Pill (1974)
- Kelly Country (1983)
- Frontier of the Dark (1984)
External links
- A. Bertram Chandler 1912–1984 at bertramchandler.com
- The Rim Worlds Concordance
- Inception of The Ehrenhaft Drive (Gaussjammers)
- Online text of "The Rim Gods"
- Todd Bennett's list of all John Grimes books and stories, with covers of various editions
- Todd Bennett's list of all non-Grimes Rim Worlds books and stories, with covers of various editions