X is a very interesting letter and I wondered to myself last night who I could possibly find to fill today’s void. My first stop was SF Encyclopedia where I found five entries, they all appear to be pen names, one is female and the person who seemed to fit the bill for me is Xu Zhuodai as this is the pen name of Xu Fulin. I felt there was some serendipty there.

Xu Zhuodai born in Shanghai around 1880 and died in either 1958 or 1961, I get both years when I google him. Xu seems to have done many different things including film and science fiction, I realise there’s a great deal of overlap there. He was the first person to write down the elements of film theory in Mandarin and a film script of his in 1940 was an early treatment of zombies and vampires. There were many references to Xu in google but I couldn’t be certain which ones were him, I’m pretty certain this blog has a reference to him part way down the page.