CHANDLER, A(rthur) Bertram

(1912-1984)

   UK-born writer who served in the Merchant Navy from 1928; in 1956 he emigrated to Australia, where he commanded merchant ships under Australian and New Zealand flags until his retirement in 1975. This long professional experience permeated his writing, and many of his novels feature SPACESHIPS and flotillas whose command structures are decidedly naval. ABC began publishing stories in ASF in 1944, on John W. CAMPBELL's invitation, with "This Means War", and concentrated on short fiction for almost two decades, often under the pseudonym George Whitley (in the USA and the UK), less frequently as Andrew Dunstan and S.H.M. (both only in Australia). But he published no books during this time, and maybe for that reason he was until the 1960s less well known than he perhaps deserved, even though some of his best stories date from this period. For some time he was known mainly as the author of "Giant Killer" (1945), a POCKET-UNIVERSE tale which dominates the work posthumously assembled in From Sea to Shining Star (coll 1990), and whose solitary prominence suggests that - although he published nearly 200 stories - ABC was not entirely comfortable in shorter forms.After reaching the rank of chief officer, ABC stopped writing for some time. He began again with a spate of tales in the late 1950s, and finally published his first novel at the beginning of the new decade. Thereafter he concentrated on full-length, albeit short, books, most of which have dealt, directly or indirectly, with his central venue, the various Rim Worlds set like isolated islands along the edge of the Galaxy (GALACTIC LENS; RIMWORLD) during a period of human expansion. Not all these novels are serially connected, though all have a common background (which includes terminology and a set of frequently mentioned planets, like Thule and Faraway); John Grimes, the protagonist of the central sequence, appears also in some non-series novels. The two Derek Calver books - The Rim of Space (1961 US), ABC's first novel, and The Ship from Outside (1959 ASF as "The Outsiders" ; exp 1963 dos US) - make up a kind of trailer for the more numerous stories grouped about the figure of Grimes. In these books, Calver, following something like the same course Grimes will, comes to the Rim Worlds, eventually becomes captain of his own starship, Lorn Lady, loses her, sails on other star tramps, and engages in far-flung adventures.Grimes is mentioned in this short series, and the John Grimes/Rim World series massively expands upon a very similar career and life. Grimes himself dominates two main sequences. The first chronologically (though most of it was written later) traces his career in the Federation Survey Service up to and beyond the point that he shifts loyalties to the Rim. Their internal order is as follows: The Road to the Rim (1967 dos US); To Prime the Pump (1971 US); The Hard Way Up (coll 1972 dos US), which also appears with the first novel as The Road to the Rim (omni 1979 US); False Fatherland (1968; vt Spartan Planet 1969 US); The Inheritors (1972 dos US), which involves GENETIC ENGINEERING; The Broken Cycle (1975 UK); The Big Black Mark (1975 US); The Far Traveller (1977 UK); Star Courier (1977 US); To Keep the Ship (1978 UK); Matilda's Stepchildren (1979 UK); Star Loot (1980 US); The Anarch Lords (1981 US); The Last Amazon (1984 US); The Wild Ones (1984); Catch the Star Winds (coll of 1 novel and 1 story 1969 US). The second sequence advances Grimes further into his second career with the Rim Runners and the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve. Begun earlier and not written with any internal order in mind, it includes, in order of publication: Into the Alternate Universe (1964 dos US) and Contraband from Other-Space (1967 dos US), both assembled as Into the Alternate Universe (omni 1979 US); The Rim Gods (coll of linked stories 1969 dos US) and The Dark Dimensions (1971 dos US), both assembled as The Dark Dimensions (omni 1978 US); Alternate Orbits (coll 1971 dos US), assembled with False Fatherland as The Commodore at Sea (omni 1979 US); The Gateway to Never (1972 dos US) - crudely reassembled out of sequence as The Inheritors (omni 1978 US), having been originally published dos-a-dos with the novel of that title-and The Way Back (1976 UK). Through these books Grimes's somewhat melancholy temperament and con-sistent ingenuity often remind one of C.S. FORESTER's Horatio Hornblower, an influence ABC acknowledged (though Grimes's sexual forthrightness strikes a new note); but it is of course more than Hornblower's character that is drawn from the earlier genre. The Grimes/Rim World sequence is very clearly a transposition - much more directly than is usually the case - of ships into spaceships, seas into the blackness between the stars, and ports into home-planets. Much of the warmth and detail of ABC's work derives from this direct translation of venues, and Grimes himself establishes a loyalty in his readers rather similar to that felt by readers of Hornblower. Indeed, ABC's SPACE OPERAS are among the most likeable and well constructed in the genre, and his vision of the Rim Worlds - cold, poor, at the antipodean edge of intergalactic darkness, but full of all the pioneer virtues - are the genre's homiest characterization of that corner of space opera's galactic arena.Two singletons merit some notice. The Bitter Pill (1974) sourly depicts a totalitarian DYSTOPIA on Earth, and the ultimately successful attempts its leading characters make to wrest Mars free of oppression; and Kelly Country (1976 Void; exp 1983) places a war for Australian independence in a PARALLEL-WORLDS setting.ABC received the Australian Ditmar (AWARDS) in 1969, 1971, 1974 and 1976.

   JC

   Other works: Bring Back Yesterday (1961 dos US); Rendezvous on a Lost World (1961 dos US; vt When the Dream Dies 1981 UK); The Hamelin Plague (1963 US); Beyond the Galactic Rim (coll 1963 dos US); the Christopher Wilkinson novels, comprising The Coils of Time (1964 dos US) and The Alternate Martians (1965 dos US); Glory Planet (1964 US); The Deep Reaches of Space (1946 ASF as "Special Knowledge"; rev 1964 UK), whose protagonist is ABC's main pseudonym, George Whitley; the Empress series of space operas, placed in an ALTERNATE-WORLDS universe similar to Grimes's and comprising Empress of Outer Space (1965 dos US), Space Mercenaries (1965 dos US) and Nebula Alert (1967 dos US); The Sea Beasts (1971 US); Up to the Sky in Ships (coll 1982 chap dos US); To Rule the Refugees (1983 Japan); Frontier of the Dark (1984 US); Find the Lady (1984 Japan).

   About the author: Arthur Bertram Chandler, Master Navigator of Space: A Working Bibliography (latest edn 1989 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr.

   See also: AUSTRALIA; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; FASTER THAN LIGHT; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GREAT AND SMALL; ROBERT HALE LIMITED.