To the Galactic Rim (The John Grimes Saga) by A. Bertram Chandler

To the Galactic Rim (The John Grimes Saga) Reviews

• 
  Alan

  Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. When I first ran across
  A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes novels, I must've been at or near the so-called Golden Age of science fiction: thirteen. And to a thirteen-year-old mind, this stuff is great, sweeping space opera epic in scope but grounded in salty humor from a quirky, crusty main character: John Grimes, whom we first meet as an Ensign in the Federation Survey Service, fresh off of Earth and wet behind his rather large and prominent ears. Grimes doesn't stay a stripling for long, though. I've only read this particular edition once, but I've read these books three or four times each in earlier editions, and always enjoyed the respite from heavier literature.
  
  Thirty years or so further on, though... well, it's a lot harder to appreciate Chandler's work wholeheartedly. This is pulp sci-fi (term used advisedly), its plots and themes lifted wholesale from 19th-century naval fiction and Chandler's own life as a merchant marine officer, and the attitudes therein were already fast becoming archaic even as these books were being written. From pipe-smoking in spaceship common rooms, to questionable breakfast choices (Grimes enjoys a meal apparently consisting solely of "kidneys, sausage and bacon" at one point), to casual sexism and sexual harassment as social norms, Chandler's Galactic Rim novels—of which this omnibus edition is a fair sampling—often read like a 1950s-era Playboy magazine ideal brought unaltered into the future.
  
  And yet... these works still have a certain appeal. The universe Chandler imagines in these four short novels—
  The Road to the Rim;
  To Prime the Pump;
  The Hard Way Up and
  The Broken Cycle—is exuberantly imagined and incredibly vivid.
  
  Part of this is the extravagance of detail—for example, where most science fiction involving space travel has but one "star drive," contenting itself with a single method of getting from system to system, Chandler came up with several—often all installed on the same ship! It's like (and probably modeled after) the transition from sail to steam, when a ship on Earth's seas might have had a coal-fired steam engine, traditional rigged sails, and even oars or sweeps for close work and when the coal runs out and the wind fails. A starship on which John Grimes is serving—whether it be a giant Alpha-class liner or a tiny Epsilon-class scout—would have its Reaction Drive (rockets for maneuvering in space and extra boost during takeoff), an Inertial Drive for landing and taking off from planets, and the Mannschenn Drive with its endlessly-precessing gyroscopes for faster-than-light travel between star systems. Older ships were "gaussjammers" or "lodejammers" using the Ehrenhaft Drive, yet another technology, this one dependent on easily-disrupted magnetic lines of force between solar systems. Each mechanism has its own distinct characteristics and failure modes, providing many narrative hooks for different stories.
  
  Another aspect of Chandler's novels that helps make them both more realistic and more exotic to North American readers is that he was an Australian (and proud of it). His use of Australian geography, slang and social conventions added a unique flavor that "nongs and drongos" from elsewhere have to read to appreciate.
  
  This richness of imagination extends to other many features of the series, too. While Earth's Federation is probably the most powerful political entity in the near Galaxy, it's constantly in conflict with the gaudy Empire of Waverly, the sinister Waldegrenese, the Kingdom of Skandia, and of course the far-flung and rebellious Rim Worlds themselves, whose distance from the political center engenders resentments that are obviously going to be a major source of conflict from the first few pages of
  The Road to the Rim. And those are just the human worlds. The most prominent aliens to appear in this volume are the Shaara, insectile and matriarchal, but there are simian aliens, saurians and amphibians around, as well as the mysterious Old Ones and several different artificial and robotic intelligences. This is a crowded universe. There are in fact more than 20 John Grimes novels in all, and these four barely scratch the surface. Which is how it should be...
  
  
  This particular edition features a typically awkward and garish Baen cover, one that faithfully reproduces a scene from
  To Prime the Pump but nevertheless fails to convey anything much about Grimes himself (not only is he in a lurid green SCUBA suit, his face is turned away from the viewer) or his Galactic milieu. But any Baen reader knows that the covers are more of a brand signifier than an explanation of the contents... if you look past the cover, and if you still have a little Golden Age in you, the John Grimes series as presented here might just suck you in.
  
  
  

  The Wikipedia article on
  A. Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912 – 6 June 1984) was used as a source for several of the specifics in this review, when memory and example alone did not serve.
• 
  Kevin

  Over the years I've owned several unread volumes in the John Grimes / Rim Worlds universe. It always seemed complicated, series within series and several periods within the overall story arc. I never knew where exactly to start or if it mattered. This omnibus e-book finally begins to put them somewhat in order. I read the first two installments, The Road to the Rim and To Prime the Pump, the earliest John Grimes adventures chronologically, though maybe not the earliest written? I don't know.
  
  I'm afraid I found them tedious with outdated mores and very little sense of wonder. I may continue the series someday if I'm really bored, but it will not be high on my bucket list. Life is short.
• 
  David

  An omnibus edition containing the novels The Road to the Rim, To Prime the Pump, and The Broken Cycle along with the short story collection The Hard Way Up. These are all stories featuring A. Bertram Chandler's character John Grimes when he's a young man in the space navy of his universe called The Federation Survey Service. These are to the Grimes canon what books like Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower are to C.S. Forrester's famous naval hero. My favorite volume in this collection was The Hard Way Up in which young Lieutenant Grimes captains a small courier ship and goes from one adventure to another in rapid succession.
• 
  Jay

  This is pretty classic Second Golden Age of Sci-fi space opera, and as such, I expected to love it. As it was, I was underwhelmed though I still enjoyed most of the stories in the collection.
  
  The book starts and ends with relatively long stories, with a series of short tales in between. In the opening story, "The Road to the Rim," we are introduced to Ensign John Grimes, fresh from the Academy and about to take his first voyage as a newly minted member of the Survey Service--or what we Traveller players would call the Scout Service. He's only a passenger on a small liner, though, not yet actually on an assignment. He proves his mettle--and reveals some of the flaws that will follow him through many other adventures--against some pirates from a breakaway, ramshackle space polity known as The Rim. We find that one of the fears that haunts and drives him is that he will not be a good enough officer to make a career in the Survey Service and will end up a bitter and disillusioned spacer crewing a broken-down ship on the Rim. This motivation runs like a thread through most of the stories in this volume.
  
  Grimes takes on more responsibility as we move through the tales "To Prime the Pump" and "The Hard Way Up," soon assuming command of a small courier ship of his own, the Adder, with a small crew who become semi-regular characters. They are not deeply developed and there is some turnover, which seems a shame because an ensemble cast could really add a nice other dimension to these stories, which I found a little flat.
  
  There are encounters with all the usual staples of space opera: inscrutable aliens, "alien" human cultures that have developed on other worlds, robots and androids, adversarial senior officers, and even romance. A fair amount of the latter, which gives the impression that Chandler intended Grimes to evolve into a sort of dashing Dominic Flandry or space-going James Bond, which he doesn't achieve, at least not in the span of this collection. There's more than one hint, though, that Grimes will eventually reach the rank of admiral (if he can avoid the failed Rimrunner's fate) so there's time for that; and he certainly does grow and mature in some ways over the course of these installments. Enough so that, despite the fact that I think these stories and characters didn't reach their full potential, I will look forward to reading successive volumes in the series.
• 
  Leo Knight

  “To the Galactic Rim” by A. Bertram Chandler
  
  This omnibus edition collects four of Mr. Chandler's books into one volume: “The Road to the Rim,” “To Prime the Pump,” “The Hard Way Up,” and “The Broken Cycle.” All are set in his Rim Worlds setting, and feature his not exactly heroic protagonist, spaceman John Grimes.
  
  The stories follow Grimes from his first deep space voyage as a freshly minted ensign in the Survey Service, up through his first commands. Although he tries to usually do the right thing, Grimes is hardly a paragon of virtue. He smokes an odious pipe, he likes a good stiff drink fairly often, and pays a great deal of attention to the fairer sex. He makes plenty of mistakes, which usually puts his at odds with his superiors. Nonetheless, he comes across as a likable bloke, mainly because of his sense of humor.
  
  Mr. Chandler himself served in the merchant marine, and many of the details of life aboard his fictional spacecraft come from that experience. His ships seem lived in and familiar. The sublight Inertial Drive, and faster than light Mannschenn Drive, function mechanically, with gears, bearings and gyroscopes. They can be taken apart with hand tools and fitted back together. His characters also have familiar, humanizing traits. They drink, smoke, fall in love, get lucky, get dumped, tell jokes, have petty squabbles. I enjoyed this most about the stories, the juxtaposition of this homey familiarity with the weird creatures and cultures they encounter.
  
  The stories do have a dose of mysticism. Intelligent beings, and even some robots, have psychic abilities. Most ships have at least one telepath to communicate with other ships and bases. Some of the entities Grimes encounters can read minds, send thoughts, even influence behavior via mental power alone. Some of the stories hint at even deeper, more magical connections.
  
  I found these tales quite entertaining. Unlike many science fiction heroes, John Grimes seems quite humanly fallible. He has some skills, but is no polymath. He usually tries his best, but sometimes gets frustrated, contrary, and even occasionally gives up, which made me like him even more.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Per Gunnar

  It’s difficult to rate this book. If it had been written today it would probably have gotten a single star. But it isn’t. It’s written almost 50 years ago by an old marine officer. If you read them with that in mind, it surprisingly fun reading.
  
  The main character has sometimes been called “Hornblower in space”. That’s maybe a bit too much but at least it gives you some idea. The book is comprised of three novels and a collection of short stories. The first one is quite good and the rest of varying quality.
  
  They are all quite ridiculous by today’s standards of course. Not only are the technology somewhat outdated to say the least, spinning gyroscopes and mechanical devices to travel through space, but the general life and behavior of the characters are also quite out of whack by today’s standards. For instance the crew smokes like chimneys on the ship. Not that I have jumped on this militant anti-smoke trend of today but smoking on board a space ship still strikes me as something you do not do.
  
  That the author is an old-fashioned marine office is also fairly clear from all the boobs, nudeness and often recurring focus on sex that occurs throughout the book.
  
  However, as I said at the beginning, the book is so old and corny that it actually becomes a fun read.
• 
  Michael

  This book, "To The Galactic Rim", is the first omnibus in a series of books about John Grimes by A. Bertram Chandler. I have read many of the novels and short stories about John Grimes but many are hard to find and long out of print. With these collections I will finally be able to read them all. Each story is very entertaining and shows how Grimes develops in his career in the Federation Survey Service, the space fleet of the Federation. This is classic Space Opera and very entertaining. It is not for children however. I would rate it as PG 13. A must read for fans of Grimes and A. Bertram Chandler
• 
  pookie

  A slice of classic 1950s Sci-Fi curiously written in the sixties and seventies which draws upon C.S. Forester’s Hornblower tales for its inspiration, On the Galactic Rim never quite lives up to that inspiration. This collection of three novels and one short story anthology is an uneven set, at worse clumsy and naïve in its storytelling and parallels drawn, at best it is reasonable old school by a journeyman author.