LOST STORIES Chandler was apparently notorious for not keeping copies of his stories on file. An article on David Kelleher's site points out that on at least one occasion, Harlan Ellison had to have his staff research the issue of Astounding that the short story Frontier of the Dark had appeared in so that Chandler could pen an expanded version of it. (Harlan thought Frontier was one of the best things he’d ever read and had suggested to Jack that it be re-written as a novel. Chandler confessed he had no copies of the story in his files and had misplaced the issue of Astounding the short story had run in, which started the ball rolling.) Correspondence between Joshua Bilmes (estate literary agent) and Susan Chandler (wife) has also produced a claim of no copies and/or seemingly random distribution of what records may once have existed to various fans who, as of the current time frame, remain unlocatable. It is therefore highly unlikely that someday, someone will open a dust-covered box found in an attic and discover previously unpublished Chandler manuscripts. There are, however, several unpublished or missing stories we know about from various records and several extant stories that have yet to see print. Of those that exist and that remain unpublished there are: Grimes
and the Gaijin Daimyo, a Grimes and Kitty Kelly story One can hope that both will be available some day. Among the ‘lost’ stories is a title referenced by Ross Pavlac – Another Redskin Bit the Dust – in the Marcon Convention Program Book. It is listed under the heading of “forthcoming” and someone, most likely Ross, pencilled in next to it that it had been ‘sold to Cosmos’. Given that this took place in 1978, the reference to Cosmos can only mean the short-lived slick publication edited by David Hartwell. A check with Mr. Hartwell via email has confirmed that he did purchase a story from Chandler. A check with the contents of the published issues of Cosmos reveals no Chandler stories. We can therefore come to the pretty solid conclusion that Another Redskin was, in fact, the story sold to Hartwell. Communication with Susan Chandler through Mr. Bilmes produces no records of the story. Checking with Barry Malzberg (who served as Chandler’s agent during the years in question) through SFWA (SF Writers Association), reveals an acrimonious nothing. (The negativity experienced was surprising. It followed an initial pleasant exchange of emails with SFWA reps. Maybe I asked too many people the same question in roughly the same period of time (Hartwell, Bilmes, SFWA) and all of them may have contacted Malzberg who got annoyed; maybe Malzberg is the former SMLA agent famous for sending boxes of client’s manuscripts to magazine editors and the lost manuscript was in one of those boxes; maybe the collapse of SMLA was painful for Barry and the issue I raised brought back bad memories.) In any case, the manuscript for ‘Another Redskin’ appears to have been lost. But maybe not. Chandler has stated that he was most comfortable writing short story length material. Most, if not all of, his novels reveal themselves to be fairly episodic (so much so in fact that ACE chopped an entire chapter out of their version of The Rim of Space and if you didn’t know about it, you wouldn’t miss it when reading that story). Many of the Grimes novels are, in fact, groups of slightly re-written short stories with a few pages or a chapter of new connecting material. The Rim Gods (a collection) consists of four short stories that all concern a particular period in John Grimes’ career. By the simple expedient of leaving out the individual short story titles in that book, ACE turned it into a ‘novel’. Catch the Star Winds is presented as five short stories on its table of contents, but is almost always referred to as a novel. And then we come to The Far Traveler. It is well known that this novel is comprised of four previously published short stories – The Far Traveler, The Long Fall, The Sleeping Beast and Journey's End. (Although in the case of the latter, a seriously changed and shortened version appears in the novel.) As I mention elsewhere on these pages, there are, in addition, two sections of previously unpublished chapters (I previosly entitled them Unknown Title 1 and Unknown Title 2) that connect The Long Fall to The Sleeping Beast in The Far Traveller. The entire novel traces Grimes’ career following the mutiny aboard Discovery, Grimes’ return to the lost colony of Botany Bay, his resignation from the Survey Service and his acceptance of a position as yachtmaster (captain de jure if not de facto) for the Baroness De’Estang of El Dorado, who is conducting research for a thesis on the social evolution of lost colonies. The Far Traveler (short story) covers the arrival of the Baroness on Botany Bay, troubles between Grimes and Frankie Delamere, the capture and subsequent escape of the mutineers and Grimes’s swapping of his Port Captain job with the Baroness’ former yachtmaster. The Long Fall details their investigation of the lost colony on Farhaven and Grimes’ temporary ‘capture’ by the semi-intelligent fungoid creature there. Unknown Title 1 concerns the interception of a Survey Service communication detailing the discovery of a message capsule from Lode Ranger, a Second Expansion colony ship. They calculate the possible origin of the capsule and determine that they can arrive at the presumed lost colony world before any Survey Service vessels can get there. Upon arrival they find that Lode Ranger has landed on a methane world inhabited by pseudo-saurians who are apparently attacking the ship. Since Lode Ranger would have landed many decades previously, there’s something strange about the scene. Nevertheless, they land in the pinnace, explore the ship and ‘rescue’ one of the colonists who turns out to be a native inhabitant, dressed as a human in spacesuit, who is playing ‘cowboys and indians’ among the wreck of the Lode Ranger. This story is an obvious re-write of Chandler’s earlier Operation Starquest (not a Grimes story) and about which more elsewhere. The second untitled section (Unknown Title 2) which I have now given the appropriately punnish working title of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, concerns their visit to Morrowvia (the lost colony discovered by Grimes in The Inheritors) and Drongo Kane’s attempts to introduce dog-derived underpeople as the true original colonists of the planet. Long story short, Kane had attempted to enslave the cat-derived underpeople of Morrowvia but it turned out that the underpeople were true humans and therefore protected by anti-slavery laws. If Kane manages to get the dog derived colonists declared the true inheritors of the colony, he can go back into the slave trade. Grimes and the Baroness thwart his efforts. Both pieces can be read as stand-alones. Since two-thirds of the book consists of previously published short stories, its reasonable to assume that the sections mentioned above were also submitted to various publications as short stories. The known previously published stories were published in the following order: The
Far Traveler - August 1976 in Analog Unknown Title 1 ends with the line "And so, thought Grimes, rather hating himself for the ironic flippancy , another redskin bit the dust." In
order to have been listed as forthcoming in the program book,
the story had to have been finished and submitted prior to March
1978. There’s even plenty of time to shoehorn in Let Sleeping Dogs Lie and, while I’m taking a fair amount of liberty in assuming that the second episode (Unknown Title 2) was a separately written piece and even more liberty in giving it a title, I feel pretty safe in saying that its definitely the kind of title that Chandler would have used (and he uses the line at the end of this piece, just like he used Another Redskin at the end of the earlier one.) If that's the case, then the true contents of The Far Traveller would be: The
Far Traveler I'll be including these titles in the story order and amended bibliography listings since I feel so strongly that they were originally written and intended for publication as short stories. |