A. Bertram Chandler
| A. Bertram Chandler | |
|---|---|
| Born | Arthur Bertram Chandler 28 March 1912 Aldershot, England |
| Died | 6 June 1984 (aged 72) Sydney, Australia |
| Pen name | George Whitley, George Whitely, Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M. |
| Nationality | British, Australian |
| Period | 1944–1984 |
| Genre | Science fiction |
Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 – 6 June 1984) was a British-Australian science fiction author, writing under his own name and 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 troop ships. In 1956, he emigrated to Australia 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 wrote over 40 novels and 200 works of short fiction. 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 derive from his experience on board seagoing ships and thus carry a feeling of realism rarely found with other writers. He was most well known for his Rim World series and John Grimes novels, both of which have a distinctly naval flavor. In the latter, Chandler's principal hero John 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 modelled on the Windjammer. The heyday of the Gaussjammer, some centuries earlier than the Rim Worlds books, is the setting of the less well-known The Deep Reaches of Space (1964) which has undisguised autobiographical elements: its protagonist is 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 arrived at the John Grimes series in a rather convoluted and roundabout way. His original Rim Worlds protagonist was Derek Calver, the merchant spaceman who drifted from the Galactic center to the Rim (similar to Chandler himself having migrated from the UK to Australia). In The Rim of Space and The Ship from Outside, Calver had various adventures around the Rim, became a ship's captain and also met and married the purser Jane "Calamity" Arlen - like him a refugee from the center.
...
Wikipedia