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Gull, Cyril Ranger

Working name of UK journalist and author Arthur Edward Ranger Gull (1875-1923) who added Cyril to his name at the beginning of his career; moderately prolific under his own name, though he was also well-known under his pseudonym Guy Thorne; he began to publish sf with "The Automaton" in The Ludgate for January 1900 with Reginald Bacchus (1874-1945), one of whose later romans à clef features an identifiable Gull in scandalous situations. It may be because he did indeed lead an amused and unconventional life – as signalled in some of his own nonfantastic tales – he eventually began to use a pseudonym as a cover for more pious productions. But works signed Ranger Gull continued to appear, including three fairly conventional thrillers – The Soul-Stealer (1906), The Enemies of England (1915) and The Air Pirate (1919) – as well as the most ambitious of his sf novels, The City in the Clouds (1921), about an airborne pleasure-palace afloat over London. The detective novel Black Honey (1913), signed C Ranger-Gull, has some borderline-sf elements. Other novels with fantasy elements include the detective story Doris Moore (1919), the mesmeric fantasy The House of Danger (1920), The Love Hater (1921) and The Dark Dominion (1923). Gull's translations from the French include Charles Baudelaire: His Life (1868; trans 1915) by Théophile Gautier, with added material.

As the religiously conservative Thorne, his most successful work was the alarmist and poisonously antisemitic Near Future When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy (1903), in which an immensely wealthy Jewish Villain finances the manufacture of "scientific evidence" that Christ's resurrection never took place, the sudden loss of belief that Christ rose from the dead fomenting a vast increase in rapes in Britain, inspiring the Turks to invade the Balkans, and almost ending civilization worldwide. His later fantasies, stridently championing Christianity, include several with borderline-sf elements. In Made in His Image (1906) a bleak futuristic world is redeemed by Christian belief, and in The Angel (1908) and And It Came to Pass (1915) miracle-working emissaries from God help show modern mortals the error of their ways. Other tales of some borderline interest include two Future War stories depicting slightly futuristic Near Future episodes set in World War One, The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War (1915) and The Secret Sea-Plane (1915), and When the World Reeled (1924), a story of Disaster artificially induced through its villain's access to a Weather Control device. Marked by the Macabre (coll 2002), edited with an introduction by George Locke, assembles a range of stories.

Part of Gull's later life was spent in a remote seaside cottage later rented by Neil Bell, where, Bell learned, Gull's behaviour – for he did not live a life befitting Thorne – had apparently scandalized the local population. [JC/BS]

Arthur Edward Ranger Gull

born Little Hulton, Lancashire: 18 November 1875

died London: 9 January 1923

works

• The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer: An Old Story Retold (London: Greening and Co, 1902) [hb/]
• The Soul-Stealer (London: F V White, 1906) [hb/]
• The Terror by Night (London: F V White and Company, 1909) [hb/]
• The Parrot Faced Man (London: F V White, 1912) [hb/]
• Black Honey (London: Greening and Co, 1913) as C Ranger-Gull [hb/]
• When Satan Ruled (London: Greening and Co, 1914) [hb/]
• The Enemies of England (London: T Werner Laurie, 1914) [hb/]
• The Ravenscroft Horror (London: T Werner Laurie, 1917) [hb/]
  • The Ravenscroft Affair (New York: Edward J Clode, 1924) [vt of the above: hb/]
• The Air Pirate (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1919) [hb/]
• The City in the Clouds (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1921) [hb/]
• Cinema City (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1922) [hb/]

as by Guy Thorne

• When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy (London: Greening and Company, 1903) [hb/]
• Sharks: A Fantastic Novel for Business Men and Their Families (London: Greening and Company, 1904) with Leo Custance [hb/]
• First It Was Ordained (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1906) [hb/]
• Made in His Image (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906) [hb/]
• The Angel (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1908) [hb/]
• The Race Before Us (London: F V White and Company, 1910) [hb/]
• Chance in Chains: A Story of Monte Carlo (London: T Werner Laurie, 1913) [hb/Howard T Graves]
• Not in Israel (London: Cassell and Company, 1913) [hb/]
• The Greater Power (London: Gale and Polden, 1915) [pb/Piffard]
• The Cruiser on Wheels (London: T C and E C Jack, 1915) [hb/]
• The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War (London: T C and E C Jack, 1915) [hb/]
• The Secret Sea-Plane (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915) [hb/]
• And It Came to Pass (London: Jarrold and Sons, 1916) [hb/Byam Shaw]
• Lucky Mr Loder (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1918) [hb/]
• Harder Than Steel (London: T Werner Laurie, 1919) [hb/]
• The Hammers of Hate (London: Skeffington and Son, 1919) [pb/nonpictorial]
• Doris Moore (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1919) [hb/]
• The House of Danger (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1920) [hb/]
• The Love Hater (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1921) [hb/]
• The Dark Dominion (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1923) [hb/]
• When the World Reeled (London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1924) [hb/]

collections

• Marked by the Macabre (Lamorna, Cornwall: Cove Press, 2002) [coll: edited with an introduction by George Locke: pb/]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 18:36 pm on 24 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/gull_cyril_ranger>