T. Peter Park
Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:57:08 -0800
Dear all, Another reference to "Ehrenhaft Drive" ships in A. Bertram Chandler's 1950's and 1960's "Rim Worlds" science-fiction stories! This time, it's from Chandler's autobiographical essay on his science-fiction writing career, "To Run the Rim."where he reminisces about writing his early "Rim" stories in 1958-1959. He mentions writing a series of <<"Lost Colony" stories, said lost colonies having been founded by the crews and passengers of gaussjammers, the Ehrenhaft Drive ships, which got themselves mislaid in space, (The Mannschenn Drive ships, of course, got themselves mis-laid in time...)>>
Again, thanks to Steve Puckett for cluing me in on Chandler and Ehrenhaft! I still wonder, though, if any other science-fiction writers used Ehrenhaft drives or generators? Cheers, T. Peter http://www.bertramchandler.com/works/thementor6.htm To Run The Rim A. Bertram Chandler No, I'm not writing the bloody thing a third time. Twice was ample. (The First shorter version appeared in Astounding Science Fiction the second, novel length version, retitled The Rim of Space, has been published by Avalon.) But, having been asked to write an article on the Rim Worlds, this title is as good as any. Once upon a time I could really have spread myself. Once upon a time was the official chronicler of the Rim Worlds and, I suppose, something of a cartographer as well. (And what's the astronautical equivalent of hydrographer?) But that was before I lost my Rim World citizenship, when my state of mind was such that I just naturally gravitated to the bleak cold edge of the Galaxy and, masochistically, derived a perverse pleasure from living there. The first Rim World story was Edge of Night, written in January 1958. It sold to Venture - and Venture promptly folded. (Retitled The Man Who Couldn't Stop, the story finally appeared in F&SF.) When I wrote it I didn't realise what I had started - but the idea of the Rim, the last frontier, stuck in my mind, as did the names of the planets, Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo and Thule. Wet Paint followed - it was published in one of the Ziff-Davis inagazines - but it wasn't a proper Rim World story, being more concerned with the wet paint gimmick than with the Rim mythology.It was with To Run The Rim that I really emigrated to the Rim Worlds. I suppose it was, like so much of my stuff, really a disguised sea story. And Rim Runners, too, bear a certain resemblance to my present employers. Just as their ships are officered by refugees from the Interstellar Transport Commission, Trans-Galactic Clippers, the Waverley Royal Mail and so on, so are the vessels of the Union Steam Ship Company officered by refugees from Shaw Savill, Port Line, Royal Mail, and even Cunard White Star. Come to that, some of the Union Company's services are as near Rim Running as dammit. The Strahan trade, for example - with Strahan at one end and Yarraville at the other... Then came The Outsiders, a follow-up to To Run The Rim, also published in ASF. The Key followed, and was purchased by Ziff-Davis. And there was Chance Encounter, published both by New Worlds and Satellite. And there was Rimghost - still unpublished utilised later. And To Hell For A Pastime, which appeared in Fantastic Universe. Then, for a while, I got away from the Rim and worked on a series of long novelettes, the IF stories, in which I played around with the ideas of an interstellar drive, utilising the propulsive force of light, and alternative time tracks. Somehow these stories never caught on. Several editors have nibbled at them and then, eventually, turned them down. And there was a run of "Lost Colony" stories, said lost colonies having been founded by the crews and passengers of gaussjammers, the Ehrenhaft Drive ships, which got themselves mislaid in space, (The Mannschenn Drive ships, of course, got themselves mis-laid in time...) There were a few stories about the Beacon Keepers, the men and women who tended the Carlotti Beacons, the time-twisting radio-direction-finding and communications device which simplified the navigation of the timejammers and put the unreliable temperamental telepaths, with their dog's brains in aspic, out of a job. They never sold. And there were a few more stories, combining odd interstellar drives with alternative time tracks, which appeared both in New Worlds and the Ziff Davis magazines. But I couldn't keep away from the Rim. In December 1959 I wrote When The Dreams Die, The first version was a 17,500 word novelette, I sent it off to my agent in New York and heard nothing further about it for a while.... [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/