A. Bertram Chandler
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 in
Aldershot Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alders ...
,
Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...
, England – 6 June 1984 in
Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
, Australia) was an Anglo-Australian merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from
tramp steamer A boat or ship engaged in the tramp trade is one which does not have a fixed schedule, itinerary nor published ports of call, and trades on the spot market as opposed to freight liners. A steamship engaged in the tramp trade is sometimes called ...
s to
troop ship A troopship (also troop ship or troop transport or trooper) is a ship used to carry soldiers, either in peacetime or wartime. Troopships were often drafted from commercial shipping fleets, and were unable land troops directly on shore, typicall ...
s, but who later turned his hand to a second career as a prolific author of
pulp Pulp may refer to: * Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit Engineering * Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture * Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper * Molded pulp, a packaging material ...
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
. He also wrote under the
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
s of George Whitley, Andrew Dunstan and S.H.M. Many of his short stories draw on his extensive sailing background. In 1956, he emigrated to Australia and became an Australian citizen.Australian Dictionary of Biography – Arthur Bertam Chandler
/ref> By 1958 he was an officer on the
Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
-
Hobart Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
route. Chandler commanded various ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies, including his service as the last master of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS ''Melbourne''; by law, the ship was required to have an officer on board while awaiting its towing to China to be broken up.Austlit – A. Bertram Chandler
/ref> Chandler wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction, winning the Australian
Ditmar Award The Ditmar Award (formally the Australian SF ("Ditmar") Award; formerly the "Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award") has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention (the "Natcon") to recognise a ...
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). One of Chandler's daughters, Jenny Chandler, married British horror fiction writer
Ramsey Campbell Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awa ...
. His other children were Penelope Anne Chandler and Christopher John Chandler.


Writings

Chandler's descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew ''en route'' derive from his experience aboard seagoing ships, imparting a distinct sense of realism. He was most well known for his ''Rim World'' series and ''John Grimes'' novels, both of which have a distinctly naval flavour. In the latter, Chandler's principal hero, John Grimes, is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets. The books make repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the "
Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; german: Gauß ; la, Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes refer ...
jammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" – clearly modelled on the
windjammer A windjammer is a commercial sailing ship with multiple masts that may be square rigged, or fore-and-aft rigged, or a combination of the two. The informal term "windjammer" arose during the transition from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam ...
. The heyday of the Gaussjammer, some centuries earlier than the Rim Worlds books, is the setting of the less well-known ''The Deep Reaches of Space'' (1964) which has undisguised autobiographical elements: its protagonist is a sailor 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 arrived at the John Grimes series in a rather roundabout way. His original Rim Worlds protagonist was merchant spaceman Derek Calver, who drifted from the galactic centre to the Rim (as Chandler himself had migrated from the U.K. to Australia). In ''The Rim of Space'' and ''The Ship from Outside'', Calver's adventures around the Rim included becoming a ship's captain and meeting and marrying Jane "Calamity" Arlen – like him, a refugee from the galactic centre. Then appeared Sonia Verril, a
femme fatale A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
who tempted Calver, nearly ruining his marriage. With this incipient
love triangle A love triangle or eternal triangle is a scenario or circumstance, usually depicted as a rivalry, in which two people are pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with one person, or in which one person in a romantic relationship with so ...
moving towards a confrontation in deep space, the grumpy John Grimes was introduced as a secondary character very much in the background. Eventually, however, Calver and his wife, Arlen, board the Outsiders' ship and depart from the galaxy and out of all human ken, leaving the stage empty for Verril and Grimes to join in an adventure ''Into the Alternate Universe'', culminating in their marriage, with Grimes thenceforth becoming Chandler's primary character. Chandler provided Grimes with numerous new adventures, as well as charting his career backwards to its humble beginnings, much in the same way as
C. S. Forester Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 – 2 April 1966), known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Roya ...
's fictional naval hero
Horatio Hornblower Horatio Hornblower is a fictional officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, the protagonist of a series of novels and stories by C. S. Forester. He later became the subject of films, radio and television programmes, an ...
, who in some ways served as a model for the John Grimes character, was first introduced as a captain before his career was sketched backwards to his time as a midshipman. Chandler's Australian background is evident in his depiction of a future wherein Australia becomes a major world power and Australians take the lead in space exploration and in colonising other planets. Drongo Kane, a pirate captain who is the villain in several books, comes from the planet Austral, and other books mention the planet Australis in another part of the galaxy. His story " The Mountain Movers," part of Grimes's early career, includes a song for future Australian space adventurers, sung to the tune of "
Waltzing Matilda "Waltzing Matilda" is a song developed in the Australian style of poetry and folk music called a bush ballad. It has been described as the country's "unofficial national anthem". The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot (waltzing) ...
", 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, even dispossessing the natives of the planet Olgana – humanoids who resemble the
Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
. As revealed at the climax of the story, the resemblance is not accidental. In his novel ''Kelly Country'' (1984) Chandler explored an alternate history in which the
bushranger Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under ...
Ned Kelly Edward Kelly (December 1854 – 11 November 1880) was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout wi ...
was not captured and hanged, but led a rebellion, ultimately becoming the president of an Australian republic which degenerated into a hereditary dictatorship. 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 a second John Grimes who is still in the Federation Survey Service, as well as characters from the Empress Irene books and
Poul Anderson Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American fantasy and science fiction author who was active from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote also historical novels. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and ...
's
Dominic Flandry Dominic Flandry is a fictional character and the protagonist of the second half of Poul Anderson's Technic History science fiction series. He first appeared in 1951. The space opera series is set in the 31st century, during the waning days of ...
. In his
ironic Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...
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 a zoo, where, failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent, some are dissected. Eventually they become resigned to captivity and adopt a small local rodent as a pet, placing him in a wicker cage. Seeing this, their captors apologise for the mistake and repatriate them to Earth, remarking that "only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages". Sex is frequent in Chandler's books, often in
free fall In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on i ...
. Women on board are usually stereotyped in roles of
purser A purser is the person on a ship principally responsible for the handling of money on board. On modern merchant ships, the purser is the officer responsible for all administration (including the ship's cargo and passenger manifests) and supply. ...
s or passengers; seldom are they regular officers in the chain of command. Chandler's protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behaviour, but are also shown falling in love and undertaking long-lasting, harmonious marriages; e.g., Sonia Verril served as an officer before marrying Grimes. Relationships are invariably described from the male point of view; whilst women characters might be sympathetic, they are always seen from the outside. In the early ''Bring Back Yesterday'' (1961), the dashing Johnnie Petersen is involved with four women in the course of a single book, whose plot lasts no more than a few weeks. Of them, one is inconsiderate and hurts him deeply; one is kindly and motherly, but Petersen is not physically attracted to her; one is a short chance encounter which soon ends with no lasting positive or negative trace; and the last is the one and only great love of his life. Petersen changes time itself in order to save her from a gruesome death and lives happily ever after with her.


Bibliography


Rim World series

*
Gift Horse
(''If'', 1958) * '' The Rim of Space'' (Avalon, 1961) * ''Beyond the Galactic Rim'' (Ace, 1963) includes: ** "Forbidden Planet" (''Fantastic Universe'', 1959) ** "Wet Paint" (''Amazing'', 1959) ** "The Man Who Could Not Stop" (''F&SF'', 1959) ** "The Key" (''Fantastic'', 1959) * ''Rendezvous on a Lost World'' (Ace, 1961), also as ''When the Dream Dies'' (Allison & Busby, 1981) * ''Bring Back Yesterday'' (Ace, 1961) * ''The Ship from Outside'' (Ace, 1963) * "Rimghost" (''Famous SF'', 1967) * ''Catch the Star Winds'' (Lancer, 1969)


Related to the Rim World and Grimes

* ''The Deep Reaches of Space'' (1964) The main story is set in an earlier period of the same future timeline as Grimes, a period in which ships are the magnetic "Gaussjammers", recalled with some nostalgia in Grimes' time.


Empress Irene series

* ''Empress of Outer Space'' (1965) * ''Space Mercenaries'' (1965) * '' Nebula Alert'' (1967)


John Grimes novels

The John Grimes story is divided here into three parts – Early, Middle and Late. * Early Grimes – These cover Grimes Survey' Service career, from Ensign to Commander. (''The Road to the Rim'' includes a brief vision on an alternate future in which Grimes remained in the Survey Service and eventually became an Admiral – but this is nowhere else referenced.) ** ''The Road to the Rim'' (Ace, 1967) ** ''To Prime The Pump'' (Curtis, 1971) ** ''The Hard Way Up'' (Ace, 1972) includes: *** "With Good Intentions" *** "The Subtracter" (''Galaxy'', 1969) *** "The Tin Messiah" (''Galaxy'', 1969) *** "The Sleeping Beauty" (''Galaxy'', 1970) *** "The Wandering Buoy" (Analog, 1970) *** "The Mountain Movers" (''Galaxy'', 1971) *** "What You Know" (''Galaxy'', 1971) ** ''The Broken Cycle'' (Robert Hale, 1975) ** ''False Fatherland'' (Horwitz, 1968), also as ''Spartan Planet'' (Dell, 1969) ** ''The Inheritors'' (Ace, 1972) ** ''The Big Black Mark'' (DAW, 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) ** ''Star Courier'' (1977) ** ''To Keep The Ship'' (Robert Hale, 1978) ** ''Matilda's Stepchildren'' (Robert Hale, 1979) ** ''Star Loot'' (DAW, 1980; Robert Hale, 1981) ** ''The Anarch Lords'' (DAW, 1981) ** ''The Last Amazon'' (DAW, 1984) ** ''The Wild Ones'' (Paul Collins, 1984) * Late Grimes – Grimes, Rim World Commodore ** ''Into the Alternate Universe'' (Ace, 1964) ** ''Contraband from Otherspace'' (Ace, 1967) (Possibly linked to the 1945 story "
Giant Killer GIANT KILLER is a military Air Traffic Control (ATC) call sign used within certain regions of the contiguous United States (CONUS). The callsign is primarily administered by the United States Navy for military flight operations on the East Coast. ...
") ** ''The Rim Gods'' (Ace, 1969) includes: *** "The Rim Gods" (1968) *** "The Bird-Brained Navigator" (1968) *** "The Tin Fishes" (1968) *** "Last Dreamer" (1968) ** ''Alternate Orbits'' (aka ''The Commodore at Sea'') (Ace, 1971) includes: *** "Hall of Fame" (''Galaxy'', 1969) *** "The Sister Ships" (''Galaxy'', 1971) *** "The Man Who Sailed the Sky" *** "The Rub" (''Galaxy'', 1970) ** ''The Gateway to Never'' (Ace, 1972) ** ''The Dark Dimensions'' (1971) ** ''The Way Back'' (Robert Hale, 1976)


John Grimes Saga — Galactic Rim collected works

# ''To the Galactic Rim'' — “The Road to the Rim”, “To Prime the Pump”, “The Hard Way Up“ and “The Broken Cycle”. (Baen, 2011, 560 pages), # ''First Command'' — “Spartan Planet”, “The Inheritors”, “The Big Black Mark” and “The Far Traveller”. (Baen, 2012), # ''Galactic Courier'' — “Star Courier”, “To Keep the Ship”, “Matilda’s Stepchildren” and “Star Loot”. (Baen, 2013, 1024 pages), # ''Ride the Star Winds'' — “The Anarch Lords”, “The Last Amazon”, “The Wild Ones” and “Catch the Star Winds”, plus six short stories. (Baen, 2012, 880 pages), # ''Upon a Sea of Stars'' — “Into the Alternate Universe”, “Contraband from Otherspace”, “The Rim Gods” and “The Commodore at Sea” (Baen, 2014, 640 pages), # ''Gateway to Never'' — “The Gateway to Never“, “The Dark Dimensions” and “The Way Back”. (Baen, 2015, 656 pages),


Other novels

* ''The Hamelin Plague'' (1963) * ''Glory Planet'' (1964) * ''The Coils of Time'' (1964) * ''The Alternate Martians'' (1965) * ''The Sea Beasts'' (1971) * ''The Bitter Pill'' (1974) * ''
Kelly Country Kelly may refer to: Art and entertainment * Kelly (Kelly Price album) * Kelly (Andrea Faustini album) * ''Kelly'' (musical), a 1965 musical by Mark Charlap * "Kelly" (song), a 2018 single by Kelly Rowland * ''Kelly'' (film), a 1981 Canadia ...
'' (1983) * ''Frontier of the Dark'' (1984)


Individual stories

* "
Giant Killer GIANT KILLER is a military Air Traffic Control (ATC) call sign used within certain regions of the contiguous United States (CONUS). The callsign is primarily administered by the United States Navy for military flight operations on the East Coast. ...
" (1945) (Possibly linked to the 1967 John Grimes novel "Contraband from Other Space") * "Castaway" (1947) *
Preview of Peril
(1948) * "Jetsam" (1953) * "The Cage" (1957) * "The Half Pair" (1957) *
The Bureaucrat
(1958) * "Critical Angle" (1958) * "Chance Encounter" (1959) * "The Key" (1959) * "All Laced Up" (1961) * "Change of Heart" (1961) * "The Bird-Brained Navigator" (1968) * "Last Dreamer" (1968) *
When I Was in the Zoo
(1968) * "No Room in The Stable" (1971)A Bertram Chandler, Bibliography
/ref> * "Hall of Fame" (1971) * "The Last Hunt" (1973)


Critical studies and reviews of Chandler's work

;''Gateway to never'' *


References


External links


A. Bertram Chandler 1912–1984
at bertramchandler.com
"Chandler, Arthur Bertram (Bert) (1912–1984)" by Alf Van Der Poorten, published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, (MUP), 2007
* * *







{{DEFAULTSORT:Chandler, A. Bertram 1912 births 1984 deaths English science fiction writers Writers from Aldershot 20th-century British novelists Australian alternative history writers Australian science fiction writers English male novelists 20th-century English male writers British emigrants to Australia