THORNE, Guy

   Pseudonym of UK journalist and writer Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger-Gull (1874-1923); he also wrote speculative fiction as Ranger Gull. His most successful work was the alarmist and antisemitic When It Was Dark (1903), in which faked "scientific evidence" that Christ's resurrection never took place sends the Christian world into a catastrophic crisis of demoralization. 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 Godhelp show modern mortals the error of their ways. Other borderline-sf stories signed GT include 2 stories of near-future WAR, The Secret Sea-Plane (1915) and The Secret Monitor (1918), and a story ofartificially induced DISASTERS, When the World Reeled (1924). Books signed Ranger Gull include 3 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-sfelements. Other novels with fantasy elements include the detective story Doris Moore (1919), the mesmeric fantasy The House of Danger (1920), TheLove Hater (1921) and The Dark Dominion (1923). His translations from the French include Charles Baudelaire: His Life (1868 France; trans 1915 UK) by Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), with added material. The latter part of GT's life was spent in a remote seaside cottage later rented by Neil BELL- where, Bell learned, GT's behaviour had scandalized the local population.

BS

   Other work: Lucky Mr Loder (1918), a fantasy.

   See also: HISTORY OF SF; MESSIAHS; RELIGION.