Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912—6 June 1984) was an Australian science fiction author. He also wrote under the pseudonyms George Whitley, George Whitely, Andrew Dunstan, and S.H.M.
He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He was a merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troopships. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and became an Australian citizen. He commanded various ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies, and was the last master of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne as the law required that it have an officer on board while it was laid up waiting to be towed to China to be broken up.
Chandler's daughter, Jenny Chandler, married British horror fiction writer Ramsey Campbell.
Chandler wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction. He was most well-known for his John Grimes novels and for the Rim World series, which have a distinctly naval flavour. He won 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's descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew en route carry a feeling of realism rarely found in other writers, and obviously derive from his experience on board seagoing ships. Chandler's principal hero, Grimes, is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets. In the books, there is a repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically-powered spaceship known as the "Gaussjammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" - which is obviously modeled on the Windjammer.
The less well-known The Deep Reaches of Space (1964) has undisguised autobiographical elements in having as its protagonist a seaman 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's Australian background is manifested in his depiction of a future where Australia becomes a major world power on Earth and Australians take the lead in space exploration and the settlement of other planets. Drongo Kane, a piratical captain who is the villain in several books, comes from the planet Austral, and other books also mention the planet Australis in another part of the galaxy.
His story "The Mountain Movers" (part of John Grimes' early career) includes the song of future Australian space adventurers, sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda, 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 and dispossessing the natives of the planet Olgana - humanoids who resemble the Australian Aborigines. As revealed at the climax of the story, the resemblance is not accidental.
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 not only another John Grimes who is still in the Federation Survey Service, but also the 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 zoo (where some get dissected), failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent. Finally they become resigned to captivity, adopt a small local rodent as a pet and place him in a wicker cage - seeing which, their captors apologise for the mistake and repatriate them to Earth. It turns out that Only intelligent creatures put other creatures in cages...
In his 1984 novel Kelly Country Chandler explored an alternate history, in which the bushranger Ned Kelly was not captured and hanged, but led a rebellion, ultimately becoming the president of an Australian republic, which degenerated into a hereditary dictatorship.
Sex frequently takes place in Chandler books, delightfully often in free fall. Women on board are typically pursers or passengers; far less often are they regular officers in the chain of command. (Sonia Verril, before finally settling down with Grimes, was on one memorable occasion the Captain's Mate in both meanings of the word). Chandler's protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behaviour, but are also capable of falling deeply in love and of long-lasting bonding and happy, harmonious marriages. Relationships are invariably described from the male point of view; women characters might be very sympathetic, but are always seen from the outside.
In the early "Bring Back Yesterday" (1961), the dashing Johnnie Petersen manages to get involved with no less than four women in the course of a single book, whose plot lasts no more than a few weeks. Of them, one is an utter bitch who hurts him deeply; one is kindly and motherly, but he is not physically attracted to her; one is a short chance encounter (in space) which soon ends with no lasting positive or negative trace; and the last is the one and only great love of his life, and he manages to change time itself in order to save her from gruesome death and live with her happily ever after.
Rendezvous on a Lost World (vt When the Dream Dies) (1961)
Bring Back Yesterday (1961)
Catch the Star Winds (1969)
1 Short Story Collection
John Grimes novels
The John Grimes story is divided into three parts - Early, Middle and Late.
Early Grimes - These cover Grimes Survey' Service career, from Ensign to Commander.
The Road To The Rim (1967)
To Prime The Pump (1971)
The Hard Way Up1 (1972)
The Broken Cycle (Robert Hale: 1975/Daw: 1979)
Spartan Planet (vt False Fatherland [Horwitz: 1968]) (Dell: 1969)
The Inheritors (1972)
The Big Black Mark (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.
