A. Bertram Chandler

A. Bertram Chandler was a popular pulp science fiction author. He wrote over forty novels during his career as well as 200 works of short fiction. Chandler is best known for writing the John Grimes novels, the Rim World series, and the Empress Irene series. Chandler won awards throughout his career for his writing, including multiple Australian Ditmar Awards. He was an Anglo-Australian merchant marine officer for the first part of his career which ended up showing up often in his fiction as his descriptions of life aboard spaceships was very similar to his own experience on ships. Chandler was also known for using parallel universes as a plot device with many characters crossing over between universes. Road to Rim is the first book in the Grimes in Federation Service series. This book introduces John Grimes long before he is the commander of his own starship and before his part in changing the course of galactic history. Grimes is only a junior officer in this story, fresh out of the academy and very green. He heads off on his first assignment, but there are no military transports heading his way so he ends up aboard a civilian merchantman. The captain of the ship warns Grimes of the others, but he ends up being the one on the wrong side of Grimes when he makes plans to bait pirates into a trap.