A
(Arthur) Bertram Chandler was born in Aldershot, England in 1912, Chandler sailed
the world in every-thing from tramp steamers to troop transports before emigrating
to Australia in 1956. Here he commanded merchant vessels under the Australian and
New Zealand Flags up to his retirement in 1974.
Up until his death in 1984 he published over 40 science fiction novels and over
200 works of short fiction writing as A Bertram Chandler, George Whitley or Andrew
Dunstan. Many of the novels had a nautical theme, with the plot moved from the seas
of earth to the ships of space in the future. Many of the stories revolved around
the character of John Grimes some times referred to as “Hornblower of Space”. While
most stories are set in the future, they also have a distinctly “Australian” theme
with places and stories relating back to Australia today.
Chandler was the last master of the aircraft carrier Melbourne. Law required it
to have a master aboard for the months while it was laid up and waiting to be towed
off to Asia to be broken up for scrap, so in a sense he really was briefly the master
of the Australian navy's former flagship. Apparently he had his typewriter aboard,
and worked on his novels!
Chandler received four Australian SF Achievement Award "Ditmars" for his
novels. Nearly all of his novels were published in the USA. Two of his short stories
'The Cage' and 'Giant Killer’ are regarded as some of the best SF stories
written in the 1950's. He was also very popular in Japan winning the prestigious
SEIUN SHO, the premier Science Fiction award. The Japanese editions have some of
the best covers of any of the published editions.
Missing Chandler Story Published
A
new John Grimes story has finally been published more than 24 years after A Bertram
Chandler's death. The story is called
Grimes and the Gaijin Daimyo and
is part of the Kitty Kelly series. It is part of a new Australian Anthology called
Dreaming Again edited by Jack Dann and is a follow up to Jack Dann and
Janeen Webb's successful
Dreaming Down Under anthology. The book
has been published by Harper Voyager in Australia and and should be available in
all good bookshops as from July 2008. Dreaming Again has now be published
in the USA and Amazon has stock available using the following link
Dreaming Again: Thirty-five New Stories Celebrating the Wild Side of Australian
Fiction
)
Thanks to Paul Collins for making the story available more than 30 years after he
purchased it.
Swap Shop
This short story was published in New Worlds (December 1957).
Long before coinage or paper money was thought of as a purchasing medium it was customary to exchange goods. Bartering is still a useful habit today. It can well be more than useful in the future, especially on a planet where there would be a shortage of Earth type commodities.