THE SHORT INTRODUCTION

A(rthur) Bertram Chandler was a well-known British and Australian science fiction author and has been one of my favorites for decades. In fact, he became the third science fiction author I ever read when I picked up a copy of his Rendezvous on a Lost World (When the Dream Dies) in the late 60’s.

I discovered science fiction during a visit to my elementary school’s bookmobile, picking Robert Heinlein's juvenovel Starman Jones along with a brace of Wells, Verne, Shelley and Stoker. Once I had exhausted War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Mysterious Island, Frankenstein, Dracula and the aforementioned Starman Jones, I went in search of similar titles and, being rather naïve, I stuck to Heinlein since it was a sure bet that he would be delivering what I was looking for. (‘Horror’ was not yet a defined literary genre, so I really had no choice in the direction I would be heading when it came to the bookshelves.)

There naturally came a day when there were no new Heinlein titles on the shelves at the local bookstore and, in desperation, I turned to the store clerk for help. She patiently explained that RAH was not the only person who wrote that kind of thing and took me back to the racks. I’m sure she was a bit stymied by my age (I was ten at the time) but she forged ahead and recommended Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness and Chandler’s Rendezvous (which had the added bonus of being an Ace Double carrying Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Door Through Space on the reverse side).

Rendezvous on a Lost World’s cover certainly made it look like I was going to get what I was hoping for – spaceships, aliens, and mysterious happenings among the stars – and was absolutely not a disappointment. This began my life-long fascination with the worlds created by ABC and my personal association with Commodore John Grimes, Captain Clavering, The Empress, Lindisfarne Base, Dogs’ Brains in Aspic, the Baroness, Drongo Kane, Clockwork Kitty, a universal invitation to ‘spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard’ and, of course, the Rim Worlds – people and places that will mean nothing to you if you aren’t familiar with Chandler’s works, but people I’ve met and enjoyed spending time with and places that I’d love to go, all because of Chandler.

Naturally my interests in science fiction expanded over the intervening years. I dabbled in working on conventions (SunCon and Iguanacon my biggest efforts), fanzine publishing (Contact SF, for which I won a grant from my college) and writing (unsuccessfully – although writing in another genre has been successful) and collecting (I’ve got 3000+ volumes and counting, primarily Vol 1., No 1 magazines and anthologies).

Among my favorite authors are, of course, Chandler. To the list can be added Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven, and those two are of particular note because it is their efforts in creating a cohesive ‘future history’ amongst their works which has led to my own efforts with this Concordance.
The idea that a writer could create a future hundreds, if not tens of thousands of years long, one with enough detail and connectivity that it finds itself into their works as a seamless, assumed (and yet non-essential) background, fascinates me. (I engaged in the same activity for science fiction board games I’ve designed. It might be the ultimate hubris, this creating the future of the galaxy, if not the universe, but it sure is fun.)

Heinlein’s ‘future history’ is well known and well traveled. Niven’s ‘tales of known space’ are subject to constant analysis on the web and have become a source for shared universe stories (Man-Kzin Wars). It struck me as odd that, despite the fact that many of Chandler’s stories (if not most) shared a common background and history, neither he nor anyone else had seen fit to gather it all together in one place. In fact, a good case could be made for the fact that Chandler, not Heinlein, was the first SF author to work with such a detailed background – even if he himself had not formally named it or referenced it.

Seeing as how there was no ‘Rim Worlds Future History’ and with entirely too much time on my hands (this was pre-marriage), I decided to do it myself and began collecting every single Chandler story I could lay my hands on.

My subsequent research over nearly the past decade has revealed the following:

There are some excellent biographers and bibliographers out there, David Kelleher and Gordon Benson among them. There are also fans that have been much closer to Chandler than I ever was, the people at Dreamstone Press – Keith Curtis and Susan Chandler (his wife) particularly. Without those folks, I would never have found some of the stories that I did, nor been able to check facts the way I have.

One of the things that I’ve learned (both by reading Chandler’s non-fiction commentary and talking about Chandler with all and sundry) is that he did not deliberately set out to create a future history involving the Rim Worlds. Many of the connections between his stories are due to ‘borrowing’ material by the author, or re-working a story and using the same background. Numerous clues provided in Chandler’s writings and discussions via email (particularly with David Kelleher) have demonstrated that the apparent cohesiveness of the Rim Worlds based stories are due more to ‘laziness’ than they are to deliberation. I say that without being critical; as a writer myself, I know how easy it is to fall into cliché when covering the same topic numerous times, and I know how much better writing can be when describing terrain that one is intimately familiar with. Chandler’s ‘laziness’ is, in fact, our boon because without it we would not get to experience the rich detail that the Rim Worlds have become.

Notwithstanding the fact that Chandler lays no claim to creating a future history, I’ve persevered in providing his stories with one. Not only that, but I’ve taken the liberty of attempting to draw as many of his stories into it as I can possibly justify. While the inclusion of some of these stories may be a stretch, they all enjoy at least some demonstrable internal connection. Take, for example, one of his earlier stories – DRIFT (Astounding Stories, 1957).
This is, in fact, the first (historically) Rim Worlds story. The commonalities are the mention of the Manschenn Drive and a world called Atlantia. Both are common elements of later stories (the Manschenn Drive being ubiquitous and the colony world named Atlantia referenced in numerous other stories). On the other hand, none of the characters in this story are ever seen again, the time-frame for the story is obviously fairly contemporary (1950s England) unlike the vast majority of other stories (Earth is rarely mentioned or visited in subsequent tales) and the time-frames don’t work, except for the fact that one possible consequence of using the Manschenn Drive is getting lost in time. Which provides a perfectly plausible explanation for the presence of a message capsule from an interstellar space liner in the solar system of the 1950s.

The above example illustrates the manner in which I have treated all of the stories that are included in the Concordance and Rim Worlds History. ‘Drift’ is plausible; a few others are more tenuous (‘The Pied Potter’ and ‘The Hamelin Plague’ among them), but even in those cases I have endeavored to remain within the constraints of the facts found in each of the stories. The vast majority, based on locales and characters, clearly belong. Wherever the connection is not immediately apparent, I have provided an explanation and citations.

I didn’t intend this to be anything but a fun project revolving around one of my favorite authors. The manner of use to which anyone puts it is entirely up to him or her. I hope that, if nothing else, those who are so inclined can use it to visit the Rim Worlds with more knowledge and background; gamers may find a ready source of background material for scenarios. Writers may be tempted to share the universe. What’s most important to me is that all of the people, places and things that can be found on the Rim Worlds can now be found here.

The materials collected and referenced are from my own collection of Chandler’s stories. My collection is not yet complete (and therefore the Concordance is not either). I am actively seeking the missing stories (anyone with a good collection of MAN Magazine, published in Australia, please get in touch) and, as I ferret them out and read them, any appropriate materials will be added to this work.

What you will find here are the following:

A complete bibliography of Chandler’s works, with those items currently in my collection specifically noted.
A listing of the various publications that printed Chandler’s works (alphabetical and by date)
A publication time line showing the order of appearance of Chandler’s works
The Rim Worlds Concordance – alphabetically arranged by entry and arranged by major category (these categories are arbitrary and created by myself to reflect major areas of interest and include such things as People, Planets, Technologies, Ships, etc).
The Rim Worlds Story Order – a sequential listing of the stories that follow the ‘history’ of the Rim Worlds. You’ll find ‘Drift’ at number 1 and ‘The Way Back’ towards the end. If you desire to read all of Chandler’s Rim World related stories in order of their internal history, follow this sequence.
There are three other story orders as well, those for John Grimes stories (Chandler’s most famous and most chronicled character), the Empress of Outer Space series and the Derek Calver series (which are general Rim Worlds tales not involving John Grimes). These orders can be used to read those series in sequential order.

One final note. A major Chandler theme was the ‘crossing of time lines’ – alternate realities for want of a cliché – and many of his tales involved one set of characters from one time-line getting tangled up with either the same or different characters from different time-lines. Chandler even draws in Sir Dominic Flandry from Poul Anderson’s universe at one point (‘The Dark Dimensions’). Chandler also injected himself into several stories, either by name (‘Hall of Fame’) or by pseudonym (‘Rimghost’ being one) as he explored the ‘world-as-myth’ themes, doubling or perhaps quadrupling the realities in play.

This can be confusing at times as we are exposed to at least two different John Grimes characters on several occasions, or perhaps Grimes conversing with Chandler – and it is not always clear which time-line is the ‘primary’ one.

While confusing, it does let me expand the Rim Worlds canon a bit further, as I can justify doing so by dismissing insoluble contradictions as being the result of the intertwining of dimensions.

Who knows? In some other version of this universe, Bertram Chandler is sitting at a computer and busily compiling the works of John Grimes, science fiction author extraordinaire and his most famous character, Steve Davidson.

If that’s the case, I certainly hope that Mr. Grimes is as good an author as Chandler was.