A
(Arthur) Bertram Chandler was born in Aldershot, England in 1912, Chandler sailed
the world in every-thing from tramp steamers to troop transports before emigrating
to Australia in 1956. Here he commanded merchant vessels under the Australian and
New Zealand Flags up to his retirement in 1974.
Up until his death in 1984 he published over 40 science fiction novels and over
200 works of short fiction writing as A Bertram Chandler, George Whitley or Andrew
Dunstan. Many of the novels had a nautical theme, with the plot moved from the seas
of earth to the ships of space in the future. Many of the stories revolved around
the character of John Grimes some times referred to as “Hornblower of Space”. While
most stories are set in the future, they also have a distinctly “Australian” theme
with places and stories relating back to Australia today.
Chandler was the last master of the aircraft carrier Melbourne. Law required it
to have a master aboard for the months while it was laid up and waiting to be towed
off to Asia to be broken up for scrap, so in a sense he really was briefly the master
of the Australian navy's former flagship. Apparently he had his typewriter aboard,
and worked on his novels!
Chandler received four Australian SF "Ditmar" Achievement Awards for his
novels. Nearly all of his novels were published in the USA. Two of his short stories
'The Cage' and 'Giant Killer’ are regarded as some of the best SF stories
written in the 1950's. He was also very popular in Japan winning the prestigious
SEIUN SHO, the premier Science Fiction award. The Japanese editions have some of
the best covers of any of the published editions.
Baen Books
Baen Books have released four John Grimes anthologies
To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga
,
First Command: The John Grimes Saga II
,
Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III
and
Ride the Star Winds: The John Grimes Saga IV
. These are available as both eBooks and Trade Paperbacks
Prologue Books
Prologue Books have reprinted 8 Novels as eBooks, including the hard to find Glory Planet, now available for the second time since the initial Hard Cover publication. The published novels include Frontier of The Dark, Kelly Country, The Bitter Pill, The Sea Beasts, The Alternate Martians, Glory Planet, The Coils of Time and The Hamelin Plague
Audio Books
There are now 31 Novels available as audio books, including all the John Grimes
Novels. These are all available from
audible.com.
Tales From Super-Science Fiction
The short story I'll take over (originally published as by George Whitely)
has been published in the anthology
Tales from Super-Science Fiction
edited by Robert Silverberg.
Gold is Where You Find It
This article was published in Diversifier (March 1978).
There’s been a lot of talk of late about the Golden Age of science fiction. I agree that the first science fiction stories that one read in one’s undiscriminatory youth made a big impression. My own initiation many, many years ago-was with THE TIME MACHINE, by H.G. Wells. Shortly thereafter I read everything by Wells that I could lay my hands upon. With the exception of TONO BUNGAY (which had science fictional elements) I find Wells’ non-science fiction - KIPPS, MR. POLLY &c - today quite unreadable. It dates dreadfully. His science fiction dates too - but not in the same way. Wells, the science fictioneer, made bad guesses (We’ve all made bad guesses.) He made good guesses. (Those sword-wielding samurai airmen in THE WAR IN THE AIR... The supercession of sea power by air power in the same book...) He made bad guesses. (The optimism of THE WORLD SET FREE, with a Golden Age as the main result of an atomic war.) For some reason he always shied away from rockets. Even as a boy of 14 1 just couldn’t see how his Cavorite (in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON) was supposed to work. A few years later I sneered at the Moon Gun, the firing of which peculiar piece of artillery was the climax of the film THINGS TO COME.
Nonetheless, I can still read Wells’ scientific romances, as he called them, with great enjoyment. Bad guesses, good guesses there is always that
sense of wonder.
Another science fictioneer - or fantasy monger - of the same period was Sir H. Rider Haggard. A book that sticks in my memory is QUEEN SHEBA'S RING. (QUEEN SHEBA'S RING, by Rider Haggard. . .Did he realise what he was doing when he gave the book that title?) Cutting a long and involved story short, there was a prophesy. When Harmack came to Mur the dynasty of this mythical African Kingdom, founded by the Queen of’ Sheba, would be given the bum’s rush. Mur was a city. Harmack was a huge, stone sphynx some miles outside the city. One of the European explorers finding this Lost Colony fell in love with the then reigning Queen of Sheba and decided to do the right thing by his girlfriend by making sure that Harmack never would come to Mur. African explorers in Rider Haggard’s novels always had a few tons of dynamite in their baggage - so what could he simpler than to blow Haemack to smithereens? There were convenient tunnels inside the big sphynx. The charge was planted. The hero lit the blue touch paper and retired to a safe distance.
There was a Big Bang. The head of Harmack flew through the air with the greatest of ease and landed at one end of a hill, shaped like the body of a lion, inside the city of Mur. And that was the end of the Queen of Sheba’s dynasty.
I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I was in Beppu, in Japan. I was told the story of the Lost Island in Beppu Bay, The people of this island were very rich, their houses full almost busting with precious things. There was a shrine, guarded by two stone lions. There was a prophesy. If the eyes of
the lions turned red the island would sink beneath the sea.
Three thieves made their way out to the island by night, taking with them a pot of red paint. They coloured the eyes of the stone lions. Early risers saw the warning sign and raised the alarm. There was a panic evacuation. And while the thieves were helping themselves to the abandoned treasures the island sank.
But to return to QUEEN SHEB'S RING...
My wife is Czech by birth. She is multilingual and very well educated - but, in her formative years, her reading in English was confined to the classics. Until she met me she didn’t know that there was such a thing as science fiction. A year or so ago I was giving her a lecture about the Golden Age - our Golden Age, that is, I said, among other things, that Haggard does not date. Not long after this we went to change our books at the local library. I found a copy of Queen Sheba’s Ring. When we got home I thrust it into her hands. “Here you are,” I told her, “one of Haggard ‘s best.”
She read about four pages then threw the book at me. “I can’t read this. You try,”
I tried – and couldn’t read it either.
And I couldn’t read today Burrough’s Martian novels, although I lapped then up when I was a kid. Garrett P. Service - THE SECOND DELUGE and quite a few others in the old AMAZING - I couldn’t read now, yet I can remember vividly Cosmo Versail’s Ark. E.Hyatt Versail’s, Lovecraft, Ray Cummings... All of them pulled aside the curtains of those magic casements fronting perilous seas - but, at the time that they wrote, there were very few writers in any field who could write worth a damn. There was an awful lot of crud published in those days.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction?
There was also a Golden Age of Spy Fiction - but E.Phillips Oppenheim and Sax Rohemr are today far outclassed by the le Carres, Deightons, O’Donnells &c and &c.
Essentially Golden Ages are subjective, not objective, phenomena. Very few of us would enjoy being transported by time machine back to the good old Days.