First Command

The #2 omni edition of the classic science fiction of A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes books, with four legendary adventure novels in one volume. Action-loving spaceship commander John Grimes retires from heroic days in Earth's space navy only to be immediately thrown into adventures on the remote edge of the galaxy. The second in a seven-volume collection of the legendary John Grimes books Classic Star Trek meets the high seas. If space travel is going to be anything like sailing the oceans, then A. Bertram Chandler has surely caught its absolute essence in his Grimes novels. Here it is, the entire "Captain John Grimes - Far Traveller Courier" saga, collected in one volume. These are the tales of John Grimes'action-packed merchantman and courier years. After moving on from the Terran Navy, Grimes tries his hand at leading a private life, and finds he likes being his own man. The only problem is, his ship The Far Traveller has a (very stubborn and very feminine) mind of its own -- and a penchant for getting Grimes into the worse sort of interplanetary pickles. Includes: Spartan Planet, The Inheritors, The Big Black Mark, and The Far Traveler.

About A. Bertram Chandler:

"He writes his stories in the middle of a hurricane with his typewriter lashed to his desk." - John W. Campbell, legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction About the John Grimes series:

"SF's anser to Horatio Hornblower." --Publishers Weekly "As Asimov chronicled the Foundation, as Heinlein bulit his Future History, so Chandler constructs the epic of the Rim Worlds." --Analog