Arthur Bertram Chandler 28 March in Aldershot , Hampshire , England β 6 June in Sydney , Australia was an Anglo-Australian merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troop ships , but who later turned his hand to a second career as a prolific author of pulp science fiction. Many of his short stories draw on his extensive sailing background. In , he emigrated to Australia and became an Australian citizen.
Chandler's descriptions of life aboard spaceships and the relationships between members of the crew en route derive from his experience aboard seagoing ships, imparting a distinct sense of realism.
He was most well known for his Rim World series and John Grimes novels, both of which have a distinctly naval flavour. In the latter, Chandler's principal hero, John Grimes, is an enthusiastic sailor who has occasional adventures on the oceans of various planets. The books make repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the " Gaussjammer ", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" β clearly 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 which has undisguised autobiographical elements: its protagonist is a sailor 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 roundabout way. His original Rim Worlds protagonist was merchant spaceman Derek Calver, who drifted from the galactic centre to the Rim as Chandler himself had migrated from the U.
In The Rim of Space and The Ship from Outside , Calver's adventures around the Rim included becoming a ship's captain and meeting and marrying Jane "Calamity" Arlen β like him, a refugee from the galactic centre. Then appeared Sonia Verril, a femme fatale who tempted Calver, nearly ruining his marriage.
