The Broken Cycle

John Grimes: Survey Service #4

by A. Bertram Chandler

Being lost in space was no new experience to John Grimes, whose career as an interstellar officer had brought him into many such dilemmas. But being lost inside a colossal alien spacecraft had no precedent.Complicating the matter was the discovery that the very universe was not their own but an alternate and that their captor seemed to be the omnipotent force of that entire other cosmos.As Grime's only companion was the comely policewoman, Una Freeman, the fate that the Alien God selected for them required the creation of a Garden of Eden. But there were two serpents in this one - both of them bicycles!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook

118 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Arthur Bertram Chandler (28 March 1912–6 June 1984) was an Australian science fiction author. He also wrote under the pseudonyms George Whitley, George Whitely, Paul T. Sherman, Andrew Dunstan, and S.H.M.

He was born in Aldershot, England. He was a merchant marine officer, sailing the world in everything from tramp steamers to troopships. He emigrated to Australia in 1956 and became an Australian citizen. He commanded various ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies, and was the last master of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne as the law required that it have an officer on board while it was laid up waiting to be towed to China to be broken up.

Reviews

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fresh from promotion to Lietenant-Commander, John Grimes of the Survey Service is sent to decommission a ship that had bombs on board. Accompanied by Police Woman Una they accidently trigger an undiscovered fusion device while using their Mannschenn drive, which sends them wildly down the dark dimensions through space and time. When they come to they have no idea where or when they are. Following a strange signal they are ensnared by robots following an entity known as Zephalon, intent on renewing the extinct human race using Grimes and Una as Adam and Eve - an idea which Grimes enthusiastically embraces but which Una is cool on. The struggle to escape back to their own Universe should have been interesting but wasn’t. A. Bertram Chandler provides a very puerile book which is frankly offensive in parts (and probably was even in 1975). You can live without reading this one.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

review of
A. Bertram Chandler's The Broken Cycle
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 26, 2023

I tend to be reading several bks around the same time. There're usually at least 2 or 3 sitting on or near my bed. For a time, I had one sitting near my front door that I'd take outside to read in warm weather. Then there're the ones that're small enuf to fit in my pocket for when I go on a walk & stop to read on a bench or whatnot. Fascinating, right? NOT (probably). I picked this one to read b/c the other bks I was reading at the time weren't small enuf for my pocket.

I like Chandler, I've read & reviewed at least 25 of his bks prior to this one. He's in my canon of favorite SF writers. I don't exactly find his work profound but I always find it entertaining & worldly-wise. They seem to've been written mostly in a serial-like fashion but I've just read them pell-mell & I don't seem to've suffered a mental breakdown as a result. Looking online to try to make sense of the order in wch the John Grimes bks might be most linearly readable I get confused. On the "Book Series in Order" website, where the people obviously understand what's going on better than I do, I find the Grimes stories divided into 4 categories: "Commander Grimes Books", "Grimes in the Rim World Books", "Grimes in Federation Service Books", & "John Grimes Saga Books".

Publication Order of Commander Grimes Books

Rendezvous on a Lost World
(1961)

The Rim of Space
(1961)

The Ship from Outside
(1963)

The Deep Reaches of Space
(1967)

Catch the Star Winds
(1969)

The Far Traveler
(1977)

To Keep the Ship
(1978)

Matilda's Stepchildren
(1979)

Star Loot
(1980)

The Anarch Lords
(1981)

The Wild Ones
(1984)

The Last Amazon
(1984)

Tramp Captain
(1990)

Lieutenant Of The Survey Service
(2000)

Survey Captain
(2002)

Rim Runner
(2004)

Reserve Commodore
(2004)


Publication Order of Grimes in the Rim World Books

Into the Alternate Universe
(1964)

Contraband from Otherspace
(1967)

The Rim Gods
(1968)

The Dark Dimensions
(1971)

Gateway to Never
(1972)

The Way Back
(1978)


Publication Order of Grimes in Federation Service Books

The Road To The Rim
(1967)

False Fatherland / Spartan Planet
(1968)

To Prime the Pump
(1971)

The Inheritors
(1972)

The Big Black Mark
(1975)

The Broken Cycle
(1975)

Star Courier
(1977)


Publication Order of John Grimes Saga Books

To the Galactic Rim
(2011)

First Command
(2011)

Galactic Courier
(2011)

Ride the Star Winds
(2012)

Upon a Sea of Stars
(2014)

If I were to try to organize them all together, a daunting task for me, I'd probably just try to have them all lumped in one sequence. Anyway, I've gotten into this b/c I wanted to figure out what bk preceeded this & what follows it. It appears that The Big Black Mark (I reviewed that on June 18, 2016: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ) preceded it & that Star Courier (I appear to've not read this one yet) followed. The point is that while I was reading it things were familiar but I didn't really remember the specifics.

Chandler, having been a ship's captain in his non-fiction-writer life, often has his Grimes character called something like 'the Horatio Hornblower of sci-fi'. That's fair enuf, I suppose. Hence, don't be surprised (or even a little ruffled) when I call this a swashbuckling adventure. Fairly early on, Grimes & his work companion start to enter a spaceship only to have it blow to smaller bits than smithereens - a fate that shd've included them but that instead drove them into a different time & space, stranding them in parts & time unknown.

"Aboard the ship, for many, many months, the miniaturized Carlotti receiver had been waiting patiently for the signal that, owing to some infinitesimal shifting of frequencies, had never come. The fuse had been wrongly set, perhaps, or some vibration had jarred it from its original setting, quite possibly the shock initiated by the explosion of either of the two warning bombs. And now here was a wide-band transmitter at very close range.

"Circuits came alive, a hammer fell on a detonator, which exploded, in its turn exploding the driving charge. One sub-critical mass of fissionable material was impelled to contact with another sub-critical mass, with the inevitable result." - p 39

What wd you do in such a circumstance?! Why, head for whatever signal you cd pick up in hope of rescue, of course.

"At intervals of exactly twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds the signal continued to come through. It was the same message every time, the same words spoken in the same high-pitched, unhuman voice. Dizzard waling torpet droo. Waling torpet, waling droo. Tarfelet, tarfelet, tarfelet.. It was no language either or them knew, or, even, knew about." - p 55

They land on an unknown planet.

"He strained his eyes to try to catch some glimpse of human or humanoid or even unhuman figures on the ground. But there was nobody. The whole planet seemed to be no more than a great, fully automated factory, running untended, manufacturing the Odd Gods of the galaxy alone knew what." - p 78

Probably cell-phones.

Well, if you don't watch out, the next thing you know you'll be inside an alien.

""Panzen."

""Are you . . . invisible?"

""No.."

""Then where are you?"

""Here."

"Grimes neither believed or disbelived in ghosts. And there was something remarkably unghostlike about that voice, "Where the hell is here?" he demanded irritably.

""Where I am." And then, with more than a touch of condescension, "You are inside me."" - p 81

Well, what's going to happen next?!

"They took inventory. With one exception, the life support systems were untamperd with. That exception was glaringly obvious. Whatever had taken off their helmets had also uncoupled and removed the air bottles, and there were no spare air bottles in their usual stowage in the storeroom. The pistols and ammunition were missing from the armory, and most of the tools from the workshop. The books were gone from their lockers in the control cabin." - p 100

That's a fine fettle of a pickle kettle!

'Inevitably', I think of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

"["]Suppose we're taken to a zoo, somewhere . . . Can't you imagine it, John? A barren planet, metal everywhere, and a cage inside a transparent dome with ourselves confined in it, and all sorts of things—things on wheels and things on tracks and things with their built-in ground effect motors—coming from near and far to gawk at us . . . 'Oh, look at the way they eat! They don't plug thmselves in to the nearest wall socket like we do!' 'Oh, look at the way they get around! Why don't they have rotor blades like us?' 'Is that the way they make their replacements? But they've finished doing it and I can't see any little ones yet . . .' "" - pp 106-107

Yes, Grimes's companion, Una, is a woman. She was protected against fertility for awhile but that wore off.

""Keep away, you fool!" Then her manner softened, but only slightly. "If you must know—and you must—I'm a re-entry in the Fertility Stakes. From now on, lover boy, no more fun and games. We got to bed to sleep. And we don't sleep together, either."" - pp 124-125

Haven't these people ever heard of oral & anal sex?!

Anyway, you get the idea.. or AN idea. This was fun to read but I forgot about it almost immediately after finishing it.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 1 out of 5]

This volume in the series has some promise at the beginning: Grimes is kicking his heels waiting for command of a ship, there's some inter-agency conflict with "sky marshals" who need the help of the Survey Service (in the person of Una Freeman). Grimes is his usual good-natured, but bumbling self and Freeman is a very smart and capable law enforcement official. However, as the plot goes on things just get sillier and sillier. It's like a bad episode of the original _Star Trek_ series (almost exactly, actually). Grimes, several times, almost rapes Freeman, who turns out to be dumber than a rock (and one-dimensional as well: she's there for her "full breasts" only, evidently) and the situation, which has some interesting points, ends up being a big joke.

I've read the first six books of this series: Chandler is best when he restrains his humor to highlights and is more serious about his subject matter. Also, when his characters are at least a smidge sympathetic. It's hard to care about any of these characters. And the sophomoric solipsism that Chandler and his characters indulge in is of interest only to people younger than 10 years old (and they shouldn't read this one, probably).

Not worth your while.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yikes these books are bad. Grimes is the worst main character ever, he only thinks about himself and what he wants. He is constantly thinking about sex, especially when there is a female character close by. The whole plot of this book revolved around Grimes being marooned in space with a policewoman. I was hoping that because Una was a policewoman, she would have been a better character than all the previous female characters. Ha, no such luck, she's just as dumb as all the others. There are a few scenes of attempted rape, on both sides, that were not necessary for the story and helped ruin the book. It would be really nice if any of the stories about John Grimes would involve something other than him trying to chase after women. 2 out of 5 stars.

[Ken Finlay · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Broken Cycle”, fourth in the 'John Grimes:Survey Service' series, retells the story of Adam and Eve, albeit in the vastness of space and time, with A.I.
Published 50 years ago, around the time I was lapping SF up, it hasn't aged well.
John, stranded after an explosion with a woman whose, in his opinion, only attraction is her sex appeal, is not one to take no for an answer when it comes to restarting the human race. It's not rape, but it might as well have been.
It made me think of how far SF has come over the decades but, in fairness, it had to start somewhere.
It's pure pulp and reads YA even though the main characters are grown ups.
2 Stars.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

So bad it was almost good.


Almost.

[Jim Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chandler was an Australian born author who wrote the first Hornblower in Space series. Back in the seventies, I read and enjoyed many of the Grimes books. Some I picked up in the old Ace Double books and others in DAW editions. Somehow, I had missed out on this one until I found it in a used book store last year. The Grimes novels are classic pulp style series fiction. The length is short and the action is fast. Due to the length the plots were not as complicated as some of the space opera novels published today. In some ways I miss the shorter novels.

The Broken Cycle was not up to the quality of many of the other Grimes books. I thought the first chapters focused too much on everyone trying to sleep with Una. It seemed to dominate the plot. The rest of the novel was okay but did not put it near the top of the other books in this series. I would recommend reading The Way Back, The Anarch Lords, or To Keep the Ship.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The John Grimes novels were among the more entertaining of the sci-fi series that many authors churned out in the 80s. I remember they ranged from being so-so to very good, with lots of gratuitous sex, weird aliens, and violent space battles. I have vague memories of this novel being one of Chandler's weirder ones, like something someone on drugs would come up with, but it was still a fun read.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Grimes is in between ships and sent on a salvage operation which blows up in his face sending him and a female companion into another universe where they are captured by a winged centaur machine god who sets them up in a Garden of Eden to be fruitful and multiply but Grimes pisses him off and they are sent back to their own universe and end up on an abandoned planet awaiting rescue.

[Norman Howe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The young John Grimes finds himself in trouble with a young woman. As usual.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Annoying robots and a self entitled pr*ck of a main character. Why can't I stop reading these?

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction retelling of the Garden of Eden, kind of, but it was enjoyable.