Snell, Edmund
Entry updated 5 April 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1889-1972) UK author, prolific between the Wars, specializing in thrillers (often with Oriental villains) and mysteries. The Yu-Chi Stone (1925) is a Lost Race adventure set in Borneo; The White Owl (1930), on the other hand, involves an ancient Toltec curse which is activated from an ancient temple and causes its victims to commit terrible crimes. Snell's sf normally focuses on Mad Scientists and their Inventions: in Blue Murder (1927) a flame-like Ray which disintegrates its victims; in The Sound-Machine (1932), disintegration effected by sound-waves; in The "Z" Ray (1932), X-rays that are nefariously used to kill. He remains best-known for an exuberant sf thriller, Kontrol (1928), in which a Mad Scientist switches genius brains into athletes' bodies, then wipes their minds clean (see Identity Transfer; Memory Edit), in order to create a race of obedient Supermen; he is under the control of a Soviet master operator, whose network operates a fleet of futuristic vertical-take-off aerial juggernauts and a Dystopian supercity on a secret Island. All ends in flames. [PN/JC]
Edmund Snell
born London: 5 September 1889
died Worthing, Sussex: September 1972
works
- The Yellow Seven (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1923) [hb/]
- The Crimson Butterfly (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1924) [hb/]
- The Yu-Chi Stone (London: Allen and Unwin, 1925) [hb/]
- Blue Murder (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1927) [hb/]
- Kontrol (London: Ernest Benn, 1928) [hb/]
- The White Owl (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930) [hb/]
- The Sound-Machine (London: Skeffington and Son, 1932) [hb/]
- The "Z" Ray (London: Skeffington and Son, 1932) [hb/]
- The Sign of the Scorpion (London: Skeffington and Son, 1935) [hb/]
- The Back of Beyond (London: Philip Allan, 1936) [hb/uncredited]
collections
- The Finger of Destiny and Other Stories (Vancleave, Mississippi: Ramble House/Dancing Tuatara Press, 2013) [coll: pb/Gavin L O'Keefe]
links
previous versions of this entry