EDMONDS, Harry (Moreton Southey)

(1891-1989)

   UK writer of several adventure novels and of some NEAR FUTURE sf novels, beginning with The North Sea Mystery (1930), which features land-launched torpedoes which threaten to sink the entire Royal Navy. In The Riddle of the Straits (1931), a WAR story set in 1935, the UK and Japan find themselves pitted against the USSR and the USA; a Channel Tunnel saves the UK from embargo. In Red Invader (1933), Russia and Germany are once again involved, this time in intrigues against the UK. In The Professor's Last Experiment (1935; rev vt The Secret Voyage 1946) a vast war is halted when the protagonist broadcasts a "radiation" wave which stops all the engines of conflict. After WWII, HE continued in the same vein with The Clockmaker of Heidelberg (1949), featuring a new form of submarine propulsion, as well as a neo-Nazi germ-warfare plot centred in Brazil. A sequel, The Rockets (Operation Manhattan) (1951), hints at the violent end of all civilization.

   JC

   Other works: Wind in the East (1933); The Death Ship, or The Tragedy of the "Valmiera" as Related by Chief Officer James Stanley (1933).