author
Edmund Harry Leftwich
An elusive early science-fiction writer, best remembered for the eerie 1941 story The Bell Tone, in which radio experiments with ants lead to unsettling consequences. His work blends scientific curiosity, strange communications, and psychological suspense.
1 Audiobook
The Bell Tone
by Edmund Harry Leftwich
About the author
Very little biographical information about Edmund Harry Leftwich has been firmly documented. He is chiefly known as the author of The Bell Tone, a science-fiction story published in the July 1941 issue of Comet and later preserved by Project Gutenberg.
The story follows radio researcher Professor Howard E. Edwards, who investigates a mysterious signal emitted by ants and attempts to communicate with them. Surviving radio directories also list an Edmund H. Leftwich as an amateur radio operator in the 1930s and 1940s, suggesting a possible connection between the writer and the technical interests reflected in his fiction, though the available records do not establish this with certainty.