Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England – 6 June 1984 in Sydney, Australia) was an Anglo-Australian merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troop ships, but who later turned his hand to a second career as a prolific author of pulp science fiction. He also wrote under the pseudonyms 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. By 1958 he was an officer on the Sydney–Hobart 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. Chandler wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction, winning the Australian 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 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'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 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. Women on board are usually stereotyped in roles of pursers 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)
  • 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" (1972)
  • "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")
  • 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" (1971)
  • "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

Published by Baen Books:

  1. To the Galactic Rim — The Road to the Rim, To Prime the Pump, The Hard Way Up, The Broken Cycle. (2011, 560 pages),
  2. First Command — Spartan Planet, The Inheritors, The Big Black Mark, The Far Traveller. (2012),
  3. Galactic Courier — Star Courier, To Keep the Ship, Matilda’s Stepchildren, Star Loot. (2013, 1024 pages),
  4. Ride the Star Winds — The Anarch Lords, The Last Amazon, The Wild Ones, Catch the Star Winds, plus six short stories. (2012, 880 pages),
  5. Upon a Sea of Stars — Into the Alternate Universe, Contraband from Otherspace, The Rim Gods, The Commodore at Sea (2014, 640 pages),
  6. Gateway to Never — The Gateway to Never, The Dark Dimensions, The Way Back. (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 (1983)
  • Frontier of the Dark (1984)

Other story collections

  • From Sea to Shining Star (1990)

Selected individual stories

  • "Giant Killer" (1945) (Possibly linked to the 1967 John Grimes novel "Contraband from Other Space")
  • "Castaway" (1947)
  • "Hall of Fame" (1971)