Russell was interested in the works and theories of Charles Fort, and based his first novel, Sinister Barrier (March 1939 Unknown 19), on Fort's apparently throwaway solution to the rash of arbitrary mysteries and disasters that afflict the human race: "I think we're property." In Russell's novels, those who own us are parasites called Vitons (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) which or who feed on human pain and anguish, and hide behind the "sinister barrier of our limitations" that blocks our perception of most of the electro-magnetic spectrum (see Arrested Development) in hindsight, the fact that all races except Caucasians are particularly susceptible to the Vitons' brain-washing and that a Yellow Peril invasion of America comes close to defeating humanity, seems gratuitously offensive. He began publishing work of genre interest with "The Saga of Pelican West" for Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937, and he was only the second UK writer, after John Russell Fearn, to become a regular contributor to that magazine he used a slick pastiche-US style (now regrettably dated) in most of his stories, and – like John Brunner after him – was often thought to be American.
(1905-1978) UK author who used the pseudonyms Webster Craig, Duncan H Munro and Niall Wilde (also spelled Naille Wilde) on a few short stories, and borrowed Maurice G Hugi's (see Brad Kent) name for one other, "The Mechanical Mice" (January 1941 Astounding).
0 kommentar(er)
