Before taking over the milieu, John Grimes was a relatively minor player on the Rim. He didn't make an appearance until the fifth or sixth published Rim Worlds tale.

In the early '80's, UK publisher Allison & Busby began an ambitious reprint program that would've brought 13 of Chandler's Rim Worlds titles back into print in hardcover. Unfortunately, they only managed to publish 4 titles before the program was suspended.

The publisher provided a convenient listing of the proposed volumes on the jacket of the four published volumes; based on my assumption that the sequence reflects Chandler's preferred chronology, I've used it for the order of the Rim Worlds Sequence below, apart from moving some short stories to more appropriate places (based on textual clues.)

I discovered a fascinating essay by Chandler in the Australian Science Fiction Review #3 (September 1966) where he talks about the composition of the Rim Worlds stories. I've excerpted his comments below, in green.

"Once upon a time I was the official chronicler of he Rim Worlds and, I suppose, something of a cartographer as well. 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 Could Not Stop", the story finally appeared in F&SF.) When I wrote it I didn't realize 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 magazines - 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 the 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 Astounding. "The Key" followed, and was purchased by Ziff-Davis. And there was "Chance Encounter", published both by New Worlds and Satellite. And "Rimghost", still unpublished. (It eventually saw print in 1967) And "To Hell for a Pastime" which appeared in Fantastic Universe as "Forbidden Planet". Then, for a while, I got away from the Rim..."

The Avalon edition of The Rim of Space contains a couple chapters missing from all subsequent editions. Hopefully someone will publish an unabridged edition again one day.

"But I couldn't keep away from the Rim. In December 1959 I wrote "When the Dream Dies". 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... And then, for lack of anything better to do, I turned to a novel-length expansion of "To Run the Rim". New incidents were invented and other material was borrowed from Rim World stories such as "Rimghost". And of course the mild pornography expunged by John Campbell was re-inserted, and a bit extra thrown in. The magnum opus finished, it was posted to New York."

"Then once again I was out of inspiration, but the novel-writing bug had bitten me. Having heard nothing further about "When the Dream Dies", I decided to expand it to novel length. The expansion was coming on nicely when I heard from my agent, who enclosed a photostat copy of a letter from Cele Goldsmith, Ziff-Davis's editor. She liked the story, but... Her main complaint was that it was soap opera rather space opera. The expansion was brought to a hasty conclusion and sent off. Miss Goldsmith liked it. (It was still soap opera, but I had made the characters a little more credible.)"

"Suddenly things seemed to be moving quite fast on the literary front. Avalon wanted "To Run the Rim" still further expanded, and this was done - by way of borrowing rather than inventing. And the last of all the Rim World stories - Bring Back Yesterday - was written. "When the Dream Dies" suffered its final expansion, and has recently been published by Ace, retitled (Rendezvous on a Lost World)."

"You may have read Bring Back Yesterday and wonder why I class it as a Rim Worlds story. In the original version it was. The protagonist finished up on the Rim, a drunken Second Mate of one of Rim Runners' more decrepit interstellar rustbuckets. But Ace Books didn't like the ending - which at the time I thought the only possible one. However, dollars are dollars, and the majority of wordsmiths are prostitutes at heart, and so... Anyhow, I've decided now that I prefer the revised ending."

"Even so, it was the last of the Rim Runner stories. The Galactic Rim was real enough to me when I lived there: it was a state of mind that lasted rather too long for the comfort of myself and those around me. Yet I was lucky enough to be able to make capital of it and, even now, I feel a certain nostalgia for Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo, Thule, and the queer outlandish planets of the Eastern Circuit."

The following volumes contain a handful of Rim Worlds stories. They're a good place to start for new readers.