A. Bertram Chandler

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Bertram Chandler (March 28, 1912 – June 6, 1984) was an Australian science fiction author. He also wrote under the pseudonym George Whitley.

He was born in Aldershot, England. He was a merchant marine officer sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troopships. He emigrated to Australia in 1956, becoming 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.

He 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 Awards 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 sea-going 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 "Gaussjammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" - which is obviouslly modeled 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:

"When the jolly Jumbuk lifted from Port Woomera/ 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?"

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 the wrong reality. 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 shipwreaked humans wandering naked in the jungles of a faraway planet are captured by aliens and placed in zoo (and some get dissected), failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent. Finally they become resigned to captivity, adopt a samll local rodent as a pet and place him in a wicket cage - seeing which, their captors apologise for the mistake and reptriate them to Earth. It turns out that Only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages...

Contents 1 Bibliography 1.1 Rim World series 1.2 John Grimes novels 1.3 Empress Irene series 1.4 Other novels 2 External links

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] 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

[edit] 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 (1975)
  • Spartan Planet (vt False Fatherland) (1968)
  • 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 (1977)
  • Star Courier (1977)
  • To Keep The Ship (1978)
  • Matilda’s Stepchildren (1979)
  • Star Loot (1980)
  • The Anarch Lords (1981)
  • The Last Amazon (1984)
  • The Wild Ones (1984)
• 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)
  • Alternate Orbits¹ (vt The Commodore at Sea) (1971)
  • The Dark Dimensions (1971)
  • The Way Back (1976)

¹Short Story Collection

[edit] Empress Irene series

• Empress of Outer Space (1965)
• Space Mercenaries (1965)
• Nebula Alert (1967)

[edit] 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)

[edit] External links

• A Bertram Chandler 1912-1984
• A. Bertram Chandler at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "Come In. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"