Having failed to figure out how to get this blog to be hosted on my Rim Worlds website, I've had to resort to having it hosted by Blogger with a link from the site. I'll probably seek technical assistance sometime in the next few days and we'll figure out a way to transfer it over, but at least for now I can start posting.
I started posting about a month ago, but the links didn't work and I lost the initial post, which was an homage to the pulp science fiction magazines. I took all of the various nouns, adjectives and pronouns from the titles of the well-known pulps and strung them all together into one enormously long magazine title. I don't have the energy to recreate it all at this point, so that too remains a future project.
This blog will serve as an outlet for things related to the Rim Worlds site - most likely things of a science fictional nature that don't have a direct relationship to the Rim Worlds, John Grimes or Arthur Bertram Chandler, the author of those stories and the subject of the website.
To briefly summarize the site, I am and have been a fan of Chandler's stories since the 1960s and I am particularly enamoured of a place he created called the Rim Worlds. These are the inhabited planets on the edge of the galaxy and are the 'last frontier' for mankind. Its a refuge for the ne'er do wells, the fallen and the forsaken, and for those looking for a fresh start.
*The title of this piece is the title of the first Chandler novel devoted to his main character, John Grimes, a newly minted officer in the Federation Survey Service. (Its the first in the sense of sequence, not the first written.) Grimes has a promising if rocky career in the Survey Service and eventually resigns his commission. He ultimately ends up on the Rim as Naval Superintendent of the Rim World Confederacy's shipping line - Rim Runners.
But Chandler takes some 18 novels and numerous short stories to get Grimes from Ensign to Commodore and creates a richly detailed presentation of human expansion into the galaxy along the way.
In addition, there are at least two other series/characters who's backdrop are the Rim Worlds - Derek Calver (who eventually becomes a ship master in Rim Runners following a failed marriage) and the Empress Irene who's adventures take place in an alternate version of the Rim Worlds. Numerous other short stories and several novels also share this background and history.
So I've taken it upon myself to create a concordance of these works that will hopefully lead to a final story order (placing all of the various shorts and novels into a coherent sequence) and the identification of additional Rim stories not yet identified as such.
That's what www.RimWorlds.com is devoted to and, if you're interested, you can take a look at much more detail on the subject over there.
This blog, on the other hand, will only be using the web site as a departure point. My interests in science fiction are not limited to Chandler but in fact encompass most of the field. In earlier days I spent quite a lot of time hobnobbing with authors, artists and well-known fans at conventions around the country (I attended the 2nd Star Trek convention in '75 which will give you some idea of the history there). Following a long sidetrack into the paintball world (25 years+), I'm now returning to SF as my primary "hobby", which includes once again turning my hand to fiction (lack of success in fiction writing added to success in non-fiction writing equals no fiction writing...), collecting and an urge to engage in other 'fannish' activities.
My next post will deal with the recent movie release - The Last Mimzy - specifically and science fiction films in general.
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