A. Bertram Chandler

Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England – 6 June 1984 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.

The books make repeated reference to an obsolete type of magnetically powered spaceship known as the "Gaussjammer", remembered nostalgically by "old timers" – 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 (1964) 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.

With this incipient love triangle moving towards a confrontation in deep space, the grumpy John Grimes was introduced as a secondary character very much in the background.

[4] Chandler made heavy use of the parallel universe plot device throughout his career, with many Grimes stories involving characters briefly crossing over into other realities.

In his ironic short story "The Cage", a band of shipwrecked humans wandering naked in the jungles of a faraway planet are captured by aliens and placed in a zoo, where, failing in all their efforts to convince their captors that they are intelligent, some are dissected.

Chandler's protagonists are quite prone to affairs and promiscuous behaviour, but are also shown falling in love and undertaking long-lasting, harmonious marriages; e.g., Sonia Verril served as an officer before marrying Grimes.

In the early Bring Back Yesterday (1961), the dashing Johnnie Petersen is involved with four women in the course of a single book, whose plot lasts no more than a few weeks.