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.
Letter
This letter was published in The Mentor (October 1983).
Having browsed through the R & R Dept. of TM 45, I feel impelled to take up the cudgels in my own defense. Harry Andruschak, in his letter, says that he was thrilled to have caught me out in a mistake.
What mistake?
I admit to not having been sufficiently explicit. I should have said that the nautical mile in one minute of latitude at the equator, not, as I apparently did say, one minute of latitude, period. But it still seems something, which is more than either the land mile or the kilometre do. (Of course, one minute of longitude at either the North or the South Pole means nothing.)
One of my main whinges about metric measurements is the way in which they are taking the poetry out of life. For example, what used to be a common saying: Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. Can you imagine saying; give him a centimetre and he’ll take a kilometre? Dr descriptive figure or speech: Inching his way forward... Can you imagine anybody millimetring his way forward?
Shakespeare Wrote: Full fathom five thy father lies...
Would have been written: Full metres ten, more or less, thy father lies...?
And from Kipling:
Arid it’s twenty thousand mile
To our little, lazy isle
Where the trumpet orchids blow...
Substitute:
And it’s forty thousand kilometres, more or less, To our little, lazy isle &c.
So not only do we have an utterly illogical - insofar as its basic unit is concerned - system of mensuration foisted upon us but one with considerable built-in ugliness.
Somebody should have applied an aesthetic yardstick before that deplorable decision was made.