Search Worlds Without End

Grimes and Sonya embark on a wholly different adventure: marriage. But running their own little shipping company takes a back seat to danger when a distress call leads the pair to an alien ship from an alternate universe--a ship carrying Contraband from Otherspace--mutant rats who evolved to rule their universe... and threaten to breakthrough to ours.

Contents:

• From Sea to Shining Star - (1989) - interior artwork by Nick Stathopoulos
• Foreword (From Sea to Shining Star) - essay by Susan Chandler and Keith Curtis
• 3 - Sea Change - (1970) - novelette
• 19 - Shadow Before - (1954) - short story
• 27 - Precession - (1959) - short story
• 33 - Castaway - (1947) - short story
• 39 - Change of Heart - (1961) - short story
• 57 - Not Quite the Noblest - (1956) - short story
• 61 - As It Was in the Beginning - (1955) - short story
• 65 - What's In a Name? - (1958) - short story
• 73 - The Word - (1959) - short story
• 79 - All Laced Up - (1961) - short story
• 89 - The Pied Potter - (1971) - short story
• 97 - What Would You Do? - (1958) - short story
• 101 - The Hairy Parents - (1975) - short story
• 109 - Sense of Wonder - (1957) - short story
• 117 - Long Way - short story and Susan Chandler (variant of The Long Way 1964)
• 127 - Critical Angle - (1958) - short story
• 135 - Artifact - (1957) - short story
• 143 - Jetsam - (1953) - short story
• 153 - Moonfall - (1955) - short story
• 159 - The Idol - (1959) - short story
• 169 - Hindsight - short story
• 179 - The Last Hunt - [John Grimes] - (1973) - novelette
• 197 - Seeing Eye - (1960) - short story
• 211 - The Soul Machine - [John Grimes] - (1969) - short story
• 223 - Journey's End - [John Grimes] - (1979) - short story
• 237 - Finishing Touch - (1952) - short story
• 247 - Man Alone - short story
• 265 - The Cage - (1957) - short story
• 277 - The Kingsolving's Planet Irregulars - (1969) - novelette
• 303 - Giant Killer - (1945) - novelette
• 341 - Bibliography (From Sea to Shining Star) - essay by uncredited
• 349 - Afterword (From Sea to Shining Star) - essay by Susan Chandler and Keith Curtis

Mystery and Intrigue on the Waterways of the Planet Venus...

The Venus colony was settled and thriving, when suddenly all communication from Earth ceased. No messages. No transports. Nothing.

Insistent that science had lead their home into the depths of nuclear war, the colonists rejected technology, burning books, killing scientists, and hunkering down in the safety of a the newly formed Venusian theocracy of Beulah Land.

Only the city-state of Albany remained independent. Their machines were tolerated as a necessity--until airplanes, gunships, and weapons started patrolling the border. With war between the colonies imminent, Saint-in-Charge Adelie Dale and First Mate Whitley of Beulah Land's Richmond Queen must make heads-or-tails out of the hazardous Venusian politics... before a greater enemy obliterates them all!

Alternate Orbits

Collection containing:

• Hall of Fame - (1969) - novelette (variant of The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars)
• The Sister Ships - novelette (variant of Sister Ships)
• The Man Who Sailed the Sky - novelette
• The Rub - (1970) - novelette

The Dark Dimensions

Strange things happen near the Rim of Space. John Grimes meets John Grimes in a tale from the outside of time and space.

Beyond the Galactic Rim

Contents:

• Forbidden Planet (1959)
  
• Wet Paint (1959)
  
• The Man Who Could Not Stop (1959)
  
• The Key (1959)
  

The Ship From Outside

The reward for rescuing Thermopylae is finally paid, and Calver and his shipmates from Lorn Lady purchase a ship and rename her The Outsider. Two years are spent as a charter to Rim Runners, then six months tramping, before Sonya Verrill reappears and engineers a charter from the Federation Survey Service to look for an alien derelict. She accompanies Outsider, but proves very disruptive to Jane Calver.

Bring Back Yesterday

Second Officer John Peterson is finished as far as the Galactic clippers are concerned. Branded a deserter, stranded on Carinthia and desperate for a job, there are few places left to go. Private detective Steve Vynalek needs Petersen. Has a fanatical scientist on the planet Wenceslaus really found a way to beat the time travel problem, a way to bring back yesterday?

The Trouble with Tycho

A Treasure Hunt in a Haunted Crater

Prospecting on the Moon was grim, dangerous and usually unrewarding. Only most of the greenhorns who came to try didn't find out until after they got there.

Chris Jackson was no exeption. He put everything he owned and could borrow into this, and he'd be ruined if he failed.

His only chance meant going into Tycho - where three expeditions had already disappeared. He could try... but would he come out again...?

Nebula Alert

The Iralians were humanoid and techically free citizens of the Galactic Empire. But as slaves they were prized above all others, for they had the unique capacity to transmit acquired knowledge through heredity. And so when the space mercenary Wanderer was hired by GLASS (Galactic League for the Abolition and Supression of Slavery) to take a cargo of Iralians home it was going to be a simple task!

For one thing, they'd be hunted by interstellar slavers for their priceless passengers.

For another, the Iralians themselves had other ideas which included mutiny and high treason.

And for the third and worst, they were too close to the Horsehead Nebula, whose capacity for warping time, space and the dimensions was a permanent Red Alert for all spacecraft.

The Rival Rigelians

The team from Earth had the task of raising backward planets to the home world's high level. The situation on Rigel was this:

"The most advanced culture on Rigel's first planet is to be compared to the Italian cities during Europe's feudalistic yeas. The most advanced of the second planet is comparable to the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest."

"These planets are in your control to the extent that no small group has ever dominated millions before. No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your collective hands. For half a century, you will be as gods and goddesses!"

But the Rigelians were themselves descended from the lost colonists of old Earth and they could learn their lessons as fast as they could be taught.

In fact, they could even teach their teachers a thing or two. And therein lay the peril the professors from space never dreamed of.

Contraband From Otherspace

A deadly cargo that threatens to sheer through the fabric of reality, like a knife through soft butter.

Reality Forbidden

If wishes would only come true... how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of!

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality--and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive--when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of that came afterwards. Of the world in which on the most rigid of terror kept the cities standing, and of the man who dared escape that world, to find the last place on earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one's cake, but eat it as well!

The Alternate Martians

A space expedition to Mars find themselves in the worlds of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline.

Empress of Outer Space

Her Imperial Highness Empress Irene is in trouble. She needs to prevent the take over of the universe by the power hungry Mortimer Jones.

Space Mercenaries

Her ex-Imperial Highness of Outer Space had developed a conscience. With a well-armed space cruiser on her hands, she didn't want to sell it to just anyone - that is anyone under Empire control. So the former Empress and her ex-space captain husband, became mercenaries for Class - the Galactic League for the Abolition of Suppression and Slavery.

Their first assignment was blockade-running, to bring antibiotics to the plague-ridden humans on Antrim, besieged by the Halicheki bird-people and ignored by the Empire. Only, this would be a ticklish business for they could not fire one shot at the Halicheki without being legally termed pirates. And although the ex-Empress and her husband were open-minded enough to try all sorts of devious tricks, the prospect of being hanged for piracy by the Empress's successor did not appeal to either of their natures....

The Caves of Mars

Ric Coltor had lost an arm in an interplanetary exploration. For a spaceman at any other time that would have meant the end of his career. But not with the marelous Martian Panacea in existence. Extracted from a fungus found only on the Red Planet, it promised mankind perfect health and longer life, for it grew back internal organs, conquered disease, and could even grow back arms.

So Rick went to one of the M-P colonies to become whole again and discovered a defect in that new Utopia - M-P not only gave its users glowing good health but it also gave them a fanatical devotion to the man who administered it, Dr. Morton Krill. A devotion that was so all-encompassing that any man who received it could easily become dictator of two planets if he were twisted enough to desire that. Dr. Krill was.

The Coils of Time

Dr. Henshaw had created what he though was a time travel machine and he had sent guinea pigs through it. But now he needed a human guinea pig to test it with.

Christopher Wilkinson thought the whole idea was absurd, until a book that had been sent through the machine came back with a thumb print on it, the fingerprint of Vanessa, his long lost sweetheart!

So Wilkinson agreed to the experiment. He stood in the white circle facing the machine as it began to gleam and spin, pulling him down through the tortuous coils of time....

Into the Alternate Universe

Others called their expedition a "wild ghost chase." But for Space Commodore John Grimes and the beautiful Sonya Verrill who had initiated the project, it was strictly scientific research. Their trip along the rim of the galaxy in search of two men - two dead men - was also an investigation of the long-puzzling phenomenon of the Rim Ghosts. They would do this by penetrating into alternate universes.

There was only one real problem involved in this study - how to report its results. For once the breakthrough to an alternate world was achieved, there was no known way of getting out....

The Door Through Space

Wolf: a deadly world under a cold red sun, old when Terrans were learning to walk upright. Only one Terran agent knew Wolf well enough to pass undetected; but he had ruined his usefulness long ago. And yet only this scarred and bitter man could discover the secret of The Door Through Space...

Rendezvous on a Lost World

His was a dream few spaceman ever saw come true. In a second-hand, obsolete space ship, Kemp and his three comrades took off determined to set up a shuttle service between the planets at the rim of the galaxy.

But trouble--in the form of two lost colonies, one inhabited by giant mechanical insects and the other by the descendants of a murderous pirate--threatened. Kemps crew began to wonder: just how much will one man sacrifice to realize a dream?

The Hard Way Up

Collection including:

• With Good Intentions - shortstory by A. Bertram Chandler
• The Subtracter - (1969) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• The Tin Messiah - (1972) - shortstory by A. Bertram Chandler
• Sleeping Beauty - (1970) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• The Wandering Buoy - (1970) - shortstory by A. Bertram Chandler
• The Mountain Movers - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• What You Know - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler

The Veiled World

Shamryke Odell, save the worlds!

The Inheritors

He was a cunning, ruthless opportunist who paid when he had to and stole when he could - but never whan there was the slightest chance of getting caught. That's what had John Grimes worried: here was Kane directly under the watchful eyes - and guns - of a Federation Survey vessel, openly engaging in kidnapping and trafficking in human flesh!
Despite the fact that the beautiful inhabitants of this Lost Colony faced a fate worse than death, a more cautious - or less gallant - officer would do nothing - secure in the knowledge that regardless of appearances there would be some loophole that placed the Law squarely on Kane's side. But Grimes, being Grimes, would have to act - knowing full well that to "interfere with a merchantmen on her lawful occasions" meant a blasted career... and knowing too that Drongo Kane never broke the law...

Gateway to Never

The air was alive with the vicious buzzing of the stun-guns. The smuggler was frozen in his squatting posture, paralyzed, unable to stir so much as a finger. But the robot moved. Its drive unit hammered shockingly and unrhythmically and it shot straight upwards. Beams from hastily switched on police searchlights swept the sky like the antennae of disturbed insects - then caught it, held it, a tiny bright star in a firmament that had never known any stars. At least four machine rifles were hammering, and an incandescent tracer arched upwards with deceptive slowness.
The lieutenant had drawn his laser pistol and the purple beam slashed across the darkness, power-wasting and desperate. Some hapless night-flying creature caught by the sword of lethal light exploded smokily.

It might have the machine rifles that found their mark, it might have been the laser pistol. Nobody ever knew. But the broken beat of the inertial drive ceased abruptly and the robot was falling, faster and faster...

"Down!" shouted somebody. "Get down!"

The Lost Millennium

The day the world burned out.

The Road to the Rim

Lieutenant John Grimes of the Federation Survey Service: fresh out of the Academy--and as green as they come.

The Rim Gods

Gods! Dragons! Fairies! Frog Princess! Knights! and much more. John Grimes faces them all.

The High Hex

Man all rockets - the satilite is haunted!

The Rim of Space

Derek Calver touches down on Lorn and is determined to join the Rim Runners to explore desolate planets.

He joins the crew of Lorn Lady and sets forth for Mellise, inhabited by intelligent amphibians; for Groller, where the natives have just qualified as humanoids; for Stree with its tea loving lizards; and Tharn, home of a pre-industrial civilization., January 1965

Secret Agent of Terra

Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade - and to view the great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their rulers.

Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny.

Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible...

The Rim of Space

The Rim of Space is the first of A. Bertram Chandler's series featuring the "Rimrunners", who patrol the outer edge of the galaxy. The hero, Dereck Calver, joins the Rimrunners abroad the aptly named spaceship, The Forlorn Bitch, in an early attempt to escape the horrors of his past life.Here he meets the fated but beautiful Calamity Jane who brings disaster to Calver and his crew. Traveling through the darkness and loneliness to the planets, Tharn and Groller, the crew encounter hostility, espionage, space ghosts and storms, which test their comradeship to the limit. Calver thought he had nothing left to lose but realized too late that "on the Rim, negation is too close to the living." This thrilling nautical adventure in outer space combines all the elements that have earned Bertram Chandler the reputation as "the C.S. Forester of space fiction.”

The Ship from Outside

The reward for rescuing Thermopylae is finally paid, and Calver and his shipmates from Lorn Lady purchase a ship and rename her The Outsider. Two years are spent as a charter to Rim Runners, then six months tramping, before Sonya Verrill reappears and engineers a charter from the Federation Survey Service to look for an alien derelict. She accompanies Outsider, but proves very disruptive to Jane Calver.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Road to the Rim - [John Grimes - 1] - (1967) - novel by A. Bertram Chandler
• 143 - The Hard Way Up - [John Grimes - 3] - (1972) - collection by A. Bertram Chandler
• 145 - With Good Intentions - [John Grimes] - (1972) - short story by A. Bertram Chandler
• 168 - The Subtracter - [John Grimes] - (1972) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of The Minus Effect 1969)
• 200 - The Tin Messiah - [John Grimes] - (1972) - short story by A. Bertram Chandler
• 218 - The Sleeping Beauty - [John Grimes] - (1970) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of Sleeping Beauty)
• 245 - The Wandering Buoy - [John Grimes] - (1970) - short story by A. Bertram Chandler
• 269 - The Mountain Movers - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• 296 - What You Know - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler

Table of Contents:

• The Gateway to Never - [John Grimes - 19] - novel by A. Bertram Chandler
• The Inheritors - [John Grimes - 6] - novel by A. Bertram Chandler

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Dark Dimensions
• 207 - The Rim Gods

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Into the Alternate Universe
• 167 - Contraband from Otherspace

Table of Contents:

• The Commodore at Sea - [John Grimes - 21] - (1971) - collection by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of Alternate Orbits)
• 1 - Hall of Fame - [John Grimes] - (1969) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars)
• 50 - The Sister Ships - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of Sister Ships)
• 97 - The Man Who Sailed the Sky - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• 148 - The Rub - [John Grimes] - (1970) - novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• 195 - Spartan Planet - [John Grimes - 5] - (1968) - novel by A. Bertram Chandler (variant of False Fatherland)

The Rim of Space is the first of A. Bertram Chandler's series featuring the "Rimrunners", who patrol the outer edge of the galaxy. The hero, Dereck Calver, joins the Rimrunners abroad the aptly named spaceship, The Forlorn Bitch, in an early attempt to escape the horrors of his past life.Here he meets the fated but beautiful Calamity Jane who brings disaster to Calver and his crew. Traveling through the darkness and loneliness to the planets, Tharn and Groller, the crew encounter hostility, espionage, space ghosts and storms, which test their comradeship to the limit. Calver thought he had nothing left to lose but realized too late that "on the Rim, negation is too close to the living." This thrilling nautical adventure in outer space combines all the elements that have earned Bertram Chandler the reputation as "the C.S. Forester of space fiction.”

In five classic tales, Federation Navy Academy fledgling John Grimes is a trouble-magnet when he goes up against legal piracy, deadly fertility rites, a brutal all-male society and more.

Table of Contents:

• 5 - The Road to the Rim - [John Grimes - 1] - (1967) - novel
• 103 - To Prime the Pump - [John Grimes - 2] - (1971) - novel
• 229 - The Hard Way Up - [John Grimes - 3] - (1972) - collection
• 361 - Spartan Planet - [John Grimes - 5] - (1968) - novel (variant of False Fatherland)
• 489 - The Inheritors - [John Grimes - 6] - (1972) - novel

Table of Contents:

• 3 - The Broken Cycle - [John Grimes - 4] - (1975) - novel
• 117 - The Big Black Mark - [John Grimes - 7] - (1975) - novel
• 321 - The Far Traveler - [John Grimes - 8] - (1979) - novel (variant of The Far Traveller 1977)
• 491 - Star Courier - [John Grimes - 9] - (1977) - novel

One of the Six Omnibus Volumes that collects the complete John Grimes stories by A. Bertram Chandler.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - To Keep the Ship - [John Grimes - 10] - (1978) - novel
• 137 - Matilda's Stepchildren - [John Grimes - 11] - (1979) - novel
• 289 - Star Loot - [John Grimes - 12] - (1980) - novel
• 513 - The Anarch Lords - [John Grimes - 13] - (1981) - novel

A compendium of nine A. Bertram Chandler Stories

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Last Amazon - [John Grimes - 14] - (1984) - novel
• 167 - The Wild Ones - [John Grimes - 15] - (1984) - novel
• 307 - Grimes at Glenrowan - [John Grimes] - (1978) - short story
• 323 - Grimes and the Great Race - [John Grimes] - (1980) - novelette
• 345 - Grimes Among the Gourmets - [John Grimes] - (1978) - short story
• 359 - Grimes and the Odd Gods - [John Grimes] - (1983) - novelette
• 383 - Grimes and the Jailbirds - [John Grimes] - (1984) - short story
• 399 - Chance Encounter - [John Grimes] - (1959) - short story
• 415 - Catch the Star Winds - [John Grimes - 16] - (1969) - novel

Further adventures on the edge of space and time!

Once a spacer, always a spacer. Now practical, hard-headed Grimes is not the sort to believe in ghosts. But he's willing to give psychics a chance when shapely Sonya Verrill, a commander in the Federation Survey Service, proposes a ghost-hunting expedition in the sector around Kingsolving's Planet. Out where the fabric of space wears thin, ships have encountered Rim Ghosts - apparitions of craft and crewmates from alternate universes. When Grimes organizes a seance to make contact, their ship is yanked Into the Alternate Universe, and their only hope of getting home gain may lie in a lost relic - a sleeper ship from the first age of space exploration. After their wild ghost ride, Grimes and Sonya embark on a wholly different adventure: marriage. But running their own little shipping company takes a back seat to danger when a distress call leads the pair to an alien ship from an alternate universe - a ship carrying Contraband from Otherspace - mutant rats who evolved to rule their universe... and threaten to break through into ours.

In The Rim Gods, Grimes is drawn into four perilous adventures, when a ship full of religious fanatics uses a psionic to summon God, when a rogue Rim Worlder tries to sell advanced weaponry to the robber barons of Tangaroa, when trouble in the form of a predatory starfish threatens to ruin the economy of Mellise, and when an impossible planet appears out of nowhere - a world where dragons, fairies, and sleeping beauties are real. Another visit to Kingsolving's Planet, where the boundaries between reality and surreality are almost non-existent, finds The Commander at Sea. For he is whisked to a continuum in which fictional characters exist, and he is surprised to meet Sherlock Holmes, Lady Chatterly, Tarzan and Jane, and... A. Bertram Chandler?

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Into the Alternate Universe - [John Grimes - 17] - (1964) - novel
• 119 - Contraband from Otherspace - [John Grimes - 18] - (1967) - novel
• 225 - The Rim Gods - [John Grimes - 20] - (1968) - novel
• 359 - The Commodore at Sea - [John Grimes - 21] - (1971) - collection (variant of Alternate Orbits)
• 363 - Hall of Fame - [John Grimes] - (1969) - novelette (variant of The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars)
• 395 - The Sister Ships - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette (variant of Sister Ships)
• 426 - The Man Who Sailed the Sky - [John Grimes] - (1971) - novelette
• 459 - The Rub - [John Grimes] - (1970) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Gateway to Never - [John Grimes - 19] - (1972) - novel
• 133 - The Dutchman - [John Grimes] - (1972) - novelette
• 157 - The Last Hunt - [John Grimes] - (1973) - short story
• 177 - On the Account - [John Grimes] - (1973) - novelette
• 201 - Rim Change - [John Grimes] - (1975) - novella
• 245 - The Dark Dimensions - [John Grimes - 22] - (1971) - novel
• 375 - The Way Back - [John Grimes - 23] - (1976) - novel

Appeared in Ace Double F-117 (1961) as Rendezvous on a Lost World.

When a freighter captain stuck on a dead end run at the far end of the galaxy gets a chance to own his own ship - however old and obsolete she may be - he and his crew start to dream big dreams.

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-517 (1961).

Second Officer John Peterson is finished as far as the Galactic clippers are concerned. Branded a deserter, stranded on Carinthia and desperate for a job, there are few places left to go.

Private detective Steve Vynalek needs Petersen. Has a fanatical scientist on the planet Wenceslaus really found a way to beat the time travel problem, a way to bring back yesterday?