THE GALAXY This section contains information and speculations on the physical make-up of the Galaxy the Rim Worlds are located in. At the present time, there is no reason to assume that the Galaxy written of in the stories is anything other than a future version of our own, although we are aware of several alternate versions of it that reside "beside" our own. The first question that needs to be asked is: JUST EXACTLY WHERE ARE THE RIM WORLDS? (A discussion of their location and a general description of the galaxy as envisaged by A. Bertram Chandler.) In most grand science fiction, galactic coordinates relate to a mega-system for breaking the galaxy down into manageable chunks; quite often, these areas or territories are extremely vast in scale, being measured in hundreds, if not thousands of parsecs in dimension. Chandler seems to have handled things in a different way. His sectors appear to be ‘local’, and most likely based on the economics of shipping – something he was intimately familiar with. One of the main questions to be asked about the Rim Worlds universe is a basic one: where is the rim? I’ve posed this question to not a few Chandler afficianados and I almost always get the same initial response which is a puzzled expression. This is because it is just beginning to dawn on them that they’ve never asked themselves that particular question before. We all know that the Rim Worlds are located on “the edge of the galaxy” (otherwise we wouldn’t be subjected to evening skies that are completely devoid of stars on some nights - with only the occasional lone nebulosity serving to highlight the stark emptiness and dominated by the lenticular lens that is the milky way on others). (The preceding description was the inspiration for the opening graphic of this site.) The galaxy is unfortunately uncooperative in its physical dimensions. If you include the satellite globular clusters and other close groupings of stars that lie above and below the galaxy’s plane, it can be said to posess a roughly spherical shape and, as we all know, there is no ‘edge’ to a sphere, unless you consider the spheres' entire surface to be the boundary. If we go back to an earlier model of the galaxy (one that predominated during Chandler’s writing years), we find that it is described as a spiral, with multiple arms forming a disk that surrounds a globular, densely packed core. With this picture in mind, it is easy to imagine that what Chandler was envisioning were stars located on the outer edge of one of the outermost spiral arms of the disk. This too, presents its problems. From all kinds of various clues (not the least of which is Chandler’s own phrase “the whole man colonized galaxy”) it is clear that the Rim Worlds occupy a universe in which human exploration and colonization has spread to all four corners of the Milky Way. If this is true, and we have no reason to doubt it, then the entire outer edge of the galactic plane constitutes the ‘rim’. That however, would mean that the Rim Worlds occupy a volume of space approximately 300,000 light years in circumference. Since we know that the ‘rim worlds’ are actually only four planetary systems – Lorn, Ultimo, Faraway and Thule – and its obvious that four solar systems would be lost in such a volume, its clear that we can’t be referring to the entire circumference of the Galaxy. Even if we were to add the ‘Eastern Circuit’ (four more systems – Mellise, Grollor, Stree and Tharn -, the ‘Anti-Matter Worlds to Galactic West’, Eblis, Kinsolving’s Planet, and the Shakespearean Sector Worlds – Dunsinane, Phillippi, Elsinore and Venice – we’re still talking less than 20 systems. Obviously, the ‘Rim Worlds Sector’ occupies only a small portion of the outer edge of the galaxy. Since the Rim Worlds are so often mentioned as being the ‘last’ place that humans have gotten to, it would seem to make some kind of logical sense that they are located on the other side of the galaxy from Earth. (If the Earth is the center from which colonization begins, and exploration takes place at roughly the same rate throughout the entire galaxy, the last place to be reached would be the outer edge of a spiral arm directly across galactic center from Earth. There are good arguments against the above. One such is the idea that most expansion would take place along the spiral arms where stars are more plentiful than in the voids between the arms. Another is that it would make more economic sense to dive in towards the center, where stars are more closely packed and then, using the vast, newly acquired resources, expand from there. In either of these cases though, a spot opposite Earth on the other side of the galaxy remains just about as far away as you can get, which satisfies the requirement for the Rim Worlds being the last place that humans have gotten to.) This, however, can not be correct either. People who travel to and from Earth to the Rim are not subject to an overly long voyage (as witnessed by Mr. Grimes’ many return visits to his parents who live on Earth). Furthermore, travel times from and to various locations in the galaxy are mentioned and some are long trips indeed. (Earth to El Dorado for one.) Given that lengthy trips are mentioned seemingly whenever they occur, and no such remark is made regarding a trip to the Rim, its pretty clear that the Rim can’t lie all the way across the Galaxy from Earth. So where is it? I’ve only managed to imagine two possible logical conclusions so far and, unfortunately, at least one of them is contradicted by the stories, which means that while it may make logical sense (given all the clues), it can’t be the right answer. The two possibilities are – first, that the Rim Worlds lie above or below the plane of the ecliptic. It would be entirely possible for the Rim Worlds to actually be a small globular cluster, perhaps even “directly to Galactic north of Earth", a cluster that is the last grouping of stars before intergalactic space. A location not on the ecliptic allows for the view of the galaxy that is so often described, would account for the apparent isolation of those four worlds, answers the ‘edge of the galaxy’ requirement and remains relatively close to Earth. However, various references which I’ve only recently entered into the database render this particular theory moot. One of the most telling references is found in Chance Encounter, where the Rim Worlds are described as a failed attempt by the (then) central goverernment to establish a ring around the galaxy to protect against encroachment from outside the galaxy. One of the characters mentions that when the project was given up, ‘only a small arc’ of the galaxy had been set up for this purpose. Although not definitive, the visual image created by this statement combined with the model of the galaxy current at the time of its’ writing (1959) puts THE nail in the coffin of this theory. The second possibility is that the Rim Worlds occupy a region of a spiral arm directly out from Earth, in the opposite direction from galactic center, on the theory that the last place you ever sight-see is your own backyard. Earth lies roughly two-thirds of the way out from galactic center, most likely on the outer edge of a sub-arm of the ‘Perseus’ spiral arm. From this location, space is more densely packed with stars in either direction along the arm and across the width of that arm (moving towards galactic center), while the space out towards the edge of the galaxy consists mostly of the ‘gap’ between arms (until you reach the inner edge of the next spiral arm – the Sagitarrius arm). Its not inconsistent to imagine that when it came time to reach for the stars, the major efforts were made in the directions that offered the greatest number of possible worlds to explore and that future expansion was centered on those locations. (This does beg the question of what the strategists were thinking when it came time to build fortress worlds to defend the galaxy: it would make the most strategic sense to start putting the fortresses on the ‘edge’ closest to your home world. Of course, the recognition that extra-galactic invasion posed a real threat might not have been realized until a later time.) We therefore have to come to the conclusion that the Rim Worlds are not really located on the physical rim of the galaxy (taking into account the relatively recent discovery of satellite globular clusters) but is more a metaphorical one. Physically it does occupy a remote and isolated region of the galaxy - much like the remoteness of Australia and New Zealand. They're not on the 'edge' of the Earth, but they're certainly on the edge of nowhere. When it comes to describing the rest of the Galaxy, the first place to start are the 'sectors' described by Chandler. A ‘sector’ is actually a loose collection of suns which are serviced by some kind of regular shipping line(s). For example: The
Rim Worlds – Faraway, Lorn, Ultimo and Thule
|