Cirrus@Austlit

George Whitley indicates the reasons for not having written much in recent years, laying the blame squarely on Bertram Chandler.

A belated response from Bertram Chandler (as George Whitley) to "Australia Protests," Stirling Macoboy's criticism of the dialect used by the narrator in his 1947 story, "Boomerang." The Macoboy letter was published 12 months earlier in the February 1948 edition of Famous Fantastic Mysteries (pp.121-122). Chandler, who was at sea at the time, did not receive a copy of the issue until many months later and hence the delay in responding. In concluding his defence Chander writes:

I admit that I may have caricatured, to a slight extent, the kind of language that one hears spoken on the Sydney waterfront. And is not the kind of language I should expect to hear in Mr. Macaboy's drawing room - any more than he would expect to hear Cockney - and I live in Greater London - spoken in mine. But I shouldn't mind betting that if he cares to drop in for a friendly cup of tea twenty years or so after the rockets have come he will find the survivors - if any - won't be using the kind of English made standard by the announcers of the various Broadcasting Companies and Corporations. Even now, in spite of universal education and the influence of the radio and the better films, the English spoken in all English speaking countries is deplorable. What will it be like once the schools, the broadcasting stations and the cinemas have been destroyed? (p.8).

Inspired by the events surrounding the bombing of Japan in 1945, 'Boomerang' is one of the earliest stories to warn of the danger of accidental nuclear war. Set in the aftermath of the destruction of most of the inhabited areas of the world, the events are recalled by an old man sitting with his grandson at Sydney's Circular Quay. Nearby are the remains of what used to be the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The old man recalls the international race to be the first country to put a manned space craft on the moon, a race that started soon after the end of World War II and eventually escalated to involve individual cities around the globe - the Australian competitors being Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. Hostilities soon broke out on the moon between old enemies but it was only when the rockets begin to fall on Earth that the world became aware that most are armed. "But wot did 'appen' Granddad?' asks the boy. Picking up his grandson's toy boomerang the old man throws it in the direction of the moon. "Can't yer see? They loaded all them rockets up wi' uranium - an' sent 'em back!' (p.129).

'He laughed at devils and vampires and wasn't afraid, because they belonged to the world of fantasy–forgetting that it is sometimes the realest world of all ...'

Source: Magazine blurb.