The Rim Worlds Concordance is my personal attempt to gather together as much detailed information as there is to be had from Chandler’s works about a place he created called the Rim Worlds.

The Rim Worlds are both a specific place and a vague collection of common background elements for numerous stories Chandler has written.

As for the place:

The Rim Worlds are the last frontier of mankind – a dark frontier. From the Rim, the lens of the entire galaxy can be seen splayed out across the night sky. In the opposite direction there is only the utter desolation, the emptiness, of inter-galactic space. The few nebulosities that break this featureless void only serve as a reminder of how empty it is.

As frontiers go, the Rim is typical. Its population is made up of the misfits, the neer-do-wells, the non-conformists and those who quite literally have nowhere else to go. The Rim is cold, dark, dreary, empty, forlorn, depressing and scary.

Frontiers can be deadly. Where there is danger, there is also opportunity. Fresh beginnings. New starts. And so it is on the Rim. Being the latest (and last) sector of the Galaxy to be colonized, the worlds of the Rim need people. Any people. Foibles will be overlooked in favor of skills. Competancy in just about anything can erase just about any past.

So there it is. The last, dark frontier of mankind. Where just about anyone is welcome and where just about anything can happen (and probably has).

As for the background:

Chandler enjoyed playing with several themes. Among his most often repeated is the idea that out on the thin edge of the galaxy, time and space themselves are thin. Things can leak through. Reality can change within the consciousness of a mind. Whether it only changes within the mind or in physical reality is often not clear. Where things leak through from is not known. What kinds of things they are is hardly ever exactly known. Destinies can cross and sometimes people can change theirs – or is it only in their own minds that the life they are living now is not the life it was originally meant to be?

He played with this concept of merging alternate realities using a number of devices to transport his characters between them – drugs, religion, wishful-thinking, various technologies. Sometimes these journeys were the result of time travel, sometimes the result of space travel, sometimes a combination of the two.

Alternate realities, different time tracks, all serve to move the story along, often providing a glimpse of a character’s future – or possible future. Many of the stories employing this device take place against a shared backdrop – the Rim Worlds.

This is probably because the Rim Worlds themselves exist where the line between realities is thin, even frayed, making it easy for the writer to employ such elements.

Chandler obviously liked the place as it serves as background not only for many reality-twisting stories, but also provides the setting for his greatest and most frequently met character – John Grimes. It also serves as a background for numerous other recurring characters – Derek Calver (most likely Chandler’s original ‘John Grimes’) and the Empress Irene, who is essentially Grimes in drag.

This common background would normally seem to make things easier for the creation of a concordance – numerous oft-written about main characters who’s actions and adventures take place on the same planets, interacting with the same alien races, employing the same technologies to get from place to place, even referencing the same historical anecdotes.

This would normally make things easier, if it weren’t for those damned alternate realities constantly poking their noses in. In at least two instances (Nebula Alert and The Dark Dimensions) Chandler deliberately confuses the issue by merging alternate versions of the Rim Worlds backdrop in a get-together of his major characters. From these two major examples (and others that I have unearthed that are not as commonly discussed) it becomes clear that Calver’s Rim Worlds are not necessarily Grimes’ Rim Worlds are not necessarily the same as the Empresses’ Rim Worlds. Even if they do mention the same pre-history, the same people, the same planets and use the same time-twisting Manschenn Drive to get from place to place.

There are hints that these alternate realities are historically linear – with one branching off from another at a specific juncture and as a result of specific events – but there are also clues that they may all be taking place within the same reality, just as there are clues that this convergence is nothing more than a writer’s use of the same bag of tricks, with a few playful sidetracks thrown in for fun.

So there’s the background. Its not a complete and detailed critical analysis of Chandler’s works and themes – far from it. Rather, this brief description of the background to the majority of Chandler’s works is used merely to illustrate how confusing things can really be and serves as a launching point for explaining the methodology behind this work.

The first goal was to identify all of the Chandler stories that paid at least minimal homage to the Rim Worlds background. The second goal was to figure out the overall historical scheme to those stories. If it was possible to place them into some kind of coherent order which remained internally consistent (and which avoided at least major contradictions), then there was something to be said for the contention that Chandler had created a de facto (if not deliberate) ‘future history’ – one of the first (if not the first) in the annals of science fiction literature.

Third, by gathering together all of the references within their historical context, it would be possible to uncover additional connections, references and substantiation. Missing events (logically derived from the now extant history) would be revealed.

Fourth, it would be possible to draw additional stories into the canon, stories that initially seemed to stand alone but that were clearly part of the envisaged future history, now that that history is clearer.

This fourth goal is nothing but a personal desire to see how many stories can be connected, however tenuously. Of course, it would be possible to take the easy route and simply say ‘of course they’re connected, they’re all stories by Chandler’. I was, however, looking for connections that were more robust than that. In doing so, I had to create some rules that would retain some kind of reasonable internal consistency.

Those rules are essentially the following:

the historical nature of events must not be violated: for example, if a story detailing the invention of the Manschenn Drive had been written, it could not take place in a time that clearly followed John Grimes’ advent on the Rim. This would not be historically consistent, since Grimes uses the MD to get to the Rim. The corollary to this rule is, of course, that any story that is not historically inconsistent with the canon can automatically be included – even if it makes no direct references to the Rim Worlds or anything connected to them. This would include stories that detail the exploration of Earth’s interplanetary space, prior to the invention of any kind of faster-than-light drive.

Stories that do not directly reference the Rim Worlds or its aputerances must be logically consistent with the canon’s history, and must be referenced in some manner by those other works which do directly reference the commonalities of the Rim Worlds. By this I mean that non-canonical stories can be drawn into the canon if something they reference is implied, hinted at or a logical derivation of those works in the canon. Two examples will serve to more clearly illustrate this idea. Drift (in which a message capsule lands on 20th century Earth, is translated and appears to have been sent by an FTL ship from Earth’s future or far past) is included as the first ever ‘Rim Worlds’ story. No mention of the Rim is made in this story. No technological clues connect it to the Rim either (the characters are planetbound and it is clear from various story elements that the time frame is contemporary (40’s, 50’s). However, it is connected by virtue of the destination of the FTL ship, a planet name Atlantis, and the title – Drift. The ship is clearly lost in time, if not in space and this circumstance is often referred to in other stories as the unhappy consequence of traveling faster than light; Gausjammers (Chandler’s original space drive) can get lost in space when they encounter interstellar magnetic storms. Ships using the time-twisting fields of the Manschenn Drive can become lost in time. Atlantis is a planet often referenced in other stories, usually referred to as Atlantia, and at least once as Atlanta. These different spellings could refer to different planets, they could be typesetters’ errors, writer’s mistakes – or names for the same place in different versions of the Rim Worlds. This connection of Drift to the other stories (which ARE more internally consistent) may be a bit of a stretch: it may illustrate nothing more than a hint of where Chandler was going, but for my purposes, the connection is close enough to include it.

The second example is more complicated and is covered in greater detail elsewhere. Three stories in this example were initially non-canonical – Giant Killer, The Pied Potter and The Hamelin Plague. Giant Killer is perhaps Chandler’s most renowned work and easily his most popular, if the number of reprints is any indication. The story was written early in his career – pre-rim worlds, The Pied Potter much later, post most of the Rim Worlds related stories.

In Contraband From Otherspace, John Grimes and other recurring characters who are firmly entrenched in the Rim Worlds rescue a ship that has appeared from an alternate reality. In that version of the Rim, mutated, intelligent rats have colonized the rim and apparently keep humans as slaves. In the story, Grimes travels into the alternate realities’ past and supposedly succeeds in destroying the ship that originally brought the intelligent rats out to the rim – allowing them to get their start and creating this alternate version of the Rim Worlds.

In Giant Killer, rats aboard a spaceship are mutating and eventually seize control of the ship, killing off the human crew. Note – mutated, intelligent rats in space.

In The Hamelin Plague, intelligent rats, appearing from somewhere, threaten to destroy human civilization on Earth.

In The Pied Potter, a researcher is working with rats and it becomes apparent that some are smarter than others – before they escape.

These four stories might reveal nothing more than a seaman’s fascination with rats and the common assumption that they are probably smarter and potentially more dangerous than we give them credit for.

On the other hand, there are no internal contradictions within these stories. The circumstances detailed in Contraband From Otherspace clearly posit intelligent rats arriving on the scene – from somewhere. Giant Killer clearly illustrates the capture of at least one spaceship by intelligent rats. The Hamelin Plague details an attempt (at least the first) by intelligent rats that evolved on Earth (somehow) to take control and The Pied Potter tells the story of where (perhaps) those mutated, intelligent rats came from.

The history of the combined stories goes like this: An experiment with rats taking place contemporary with Chandler occurs and goes wrong; as a result of the experiment, some of the rats mutate into a higher-order intelligence and escape into the wide world. (The Pied Potter)

Many years later, after further mutation, the rats come out of hiding in a first bid to establish their own rule. They are defeated, but some survive. (The Hamelin Plague)

Years go by, space travel is developed and the intelligent rats decide that their best chance is to find another world to establish themselves on. Parties of rats sneak aboard various ships.

On one such ship, the rats manage to overpower the crew and seize control. They pilot the ship out of the known portion of the galaxy, seeking a world they can establish themselves on. (Giant Killer)

At some point around the preceding, reality splits into at least two divergent tracks – one in which the rats colonize the worlds later to be called the Rim, in another they don’t.

Grimes arrives on the scene and has his adventure with the rats found in Contraband From Otherspace.

Again, these three stories are not directly connected to the Rim Worlds, but they do serve as a consistent and logical antecedent to a major canonical story and have thus been included.

An obvious rule which is only mentioned here for completeness is that those stories which are obviously canonical must be consistent. In other words, all things being the same, a story in which John Grimes is named Robert Grimes would present a problem, except for –

The final rule. Since Chandler utilized alternate realities as a plot device, it is entirely logical and consistent that the Concordance be allowed to do so as well. Where a work reflects the canon but also contains ‘glitches’, the obvious and natural assumption is that we must be dealing with an alternate reality version of the main line of stories.

Plot device, lazy-writer’s tool or deliberate attempt at creating a consistent future history, Chandler’s use of multiple realities serves to enrich his writing and to make my job all that much easier.