A. Bertram Chandler

A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984) was born on this date, March 28, in England. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and is generally considered to be an Australian author.  He has fallen into a bit of obscurity today, although he is still remembered for his stories and novels of John Grimes.  This space opera series follows Grimes through his career as a cadet, officer, pirate, and independent trader.  I’ve only read a few of the stories, but what I have read, I’ve enjoyed. The entire Grimes series is available in six omnibus editions from Baen.  Depending on how much free time this work from home situation leaves me, I might give that series a go from the beginning.

Chandler spent his life in the merchant marines, and this experience is reflected in his fiction.  I’ve heard the Grimes books described as nautical novels set in space.

Chandler started his writing career in the mid-1940s, with many of his first stories appearing in Campbell’s Astounding.  While a few of these stories have been reprinted, there has never been a career retrospective of his non-Grimes work. The closest thing was the NESFA volume Up to the Sky in Ships.

In addition to being a birthday post, this is also an Astounding 90th anniversary post.  “The Cage” is arguably Chandler’s best known story that doesn’t concern Grimes.  The other one that’s well-known is his fourth published story, “Giant Killer”, from the October 1945 issue of Astounding.  That’s what we’re going to look at today.  There will be spoilers.

The story is told from the point of view of some mutants living behind the walls of a spaceship.  It won’t take the discerning reader long to figure out that the mutants in question are rats.  Rats being a constant on any ship, it isn’t surprising that Chandler used them in this story.

The rats are able to tell which of their number are mutants, and those are killed at birth.  When one female rat flees with her child, she is able to make it to a colony of mutants in an isolated part of the ship. She is killed, but her child, a male, grows up to conquer all the tribes of rats.  He has a mate who can read minds  and who helps him take over.

There is another mutant rat who can see the future. She is the one who gives the leader rat the name Giant Killer, telling him that although he will kill the giants, both the rats and the giants are doomed to die a fiery death.

None of the rats are pleasant characters.  They are all vicious and cruel, which isn’t too  surprising. Chandler is still able to make them at least partially sympathetic.

I first read “Giant Killer” in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 7 (1945).  For this reread, I read it in The Astounding-Analog Reader Volume 1.  While I found the rats rather unpleasant and hard to root for, I did think Chandler handled the story well.  One thing that did stand out for me on this reading was that the spaceship had no artificial gravity.  All the action in open spaces was in free fall.  Considering this story was published in 1945, that’s pretty impressive.

I wish someone would put together a collection of Chandler’s non-Grimes stories.  There are more than enough of them to fill a large volume.  If they are as well written as “Giant Killer” and “The Cage”, they will be worth reading.