AustLit
Alternative title:
Edge of Night
Is part of
The Rim Worlds
1950
series - author
short story
novel
novella
Issue Details:
First known date:
1959...
1959
The Man Who Could Not Stop
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Clavering steals the Shaara crown jewels and flees Earth. After many more crimes, including murder, on various worlds, he ends up on Faraway on the Rim. Once there, he can't be extradited, but he can be deported. Local laws make it virtually impossible for him to fence the jewels. He ends up going to jail and learns the name of a fence there. Upon looking up the fence, he learns that the jewels (which he stashed) have already been returned to the Shaara. He gets sent to jail again for the murder of the fence, and ends up press-ganged (as part of his sentence) into becoming a crew member aboard a ship that is leaving the galaxy entirely.
[Source: Todd Bennett. The Rim World's Concordance]
[Source: Todd Bennett. The Rim World's Concordance]
Notes
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Several websites, including The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and Steve Davidson's Chandler tribute site Rimworlds (http://www.rimworlds.com) incorrectly record that 'Edge of Night' is an alternate title to Contraband from Otherspace. These are, however, two entirely different Rim Worlds stories. The narrative of 'Edge of Night'/'The Man Who Could Not Stop' follows the exploits of the character Clavering, while Contraband from Otherspace is a John Grimes and Sonya Verril adventure. Indeed, Chandler had not invented Grimes at the time of writing 'Edge of Night' in 1958.
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Written in January 1958, the story was sold to Venture as 'Edge of Night' but never published under that title as the magazine folded soon afterwards. It finally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with the new title 'The Man Who Couldn’t Stop.' In his 1966 article 'To Run the Rim,' Chandler writes: '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.'
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Last amended 19 Apr 2024 03:34:44
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