Letter
A. Bertram Chandler

I’m sorry to hear than THE MENTOR may be going quarterly, For quite a long while I have regarded it as my safety valve, for the blowing off of steam. The enclosure - What’s in A Name? - is an example of this. I just had to get it all down on paper while it was fresh in my memory.

I don’t mind admitting that I rather like being an arrogant bastard - especially when things develop into a fight which I stand a good chance of winning. Too, regarding Saturday’s unpleasantries, there was a strong element of revenge insofar as I was concerned. my hatred for Pillar-0f-The-Establishment-Christian” - Schoolmasters goes back quite some years fifty six, to be precise.

Mind you, if it hadn’t been for the machinations of that sanctimonious bastard my career would have been altogether different. Almost certainly I should never hade gone to sea and never, in the fullness of time, become an Australian. Possibly I may have become a writer — but there wouldn’t have been any Grimes.

So now you know who to blame for that never-ending Rim Worlds series.

That very definite deviation point in my life probably accounts for my fascination with the various Ifs Of History. Talking of Ifs Of History - DAW Books have bought KELLY COUNTRY. I’ve done a special foreword for Don Wollheim, also an afterword. In return he has promised to re-insert the Battle of Kiel sequence and to give me a much better (it could hardly be worse) cover than Penguin did. It should be published early in 1985.

© 2004 Used with kind permission of Susan Chandler and her agents, JABberwocky Literary Agency, PO Box 4558, Sunnyside, NY 11104-0558 USA. The "John Grimes" novels of A. Bertram Chandler are available in electronic form for your Palm OS handheld at Palm Digital Media. They are also available through the Science Fiction Book Club to readers in the US and Canada and forthcoming from Wales Publishers in the Czech Republic.

Originally Published in The Mentor #49, April 1984 © Ron Clarke

© www.bertramchandler.com, David Kelleher 2004