Canning, Victor
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1911-1986) UK author whose surname at birth was Cannings but whose whole family changed their name to Canning. He began his career in 1929 with some unidentified anonymous stories for Boys' Magazine and The Startler; his first books were "cozy picaresques" like Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934), which verge on the fantastic but do not quite reach that deep. Two of his many later thrillers are borderline sf: in The Finger of Saturn (1973) a group of individuals who claim to have come from space attempt to return there; The Doomsday Carrier (1976) features an escaped chimpanzee infected with an artificially induced contagion. The Crimson Chalice, an Arthurian Fantasy sequence, was assembled as The Crimson Chalice (omni 1980). [JC]
Victor Canning (born Victor Cannings)
born Plymouth, Devonshire: 16 June 1911
died Cirencester, Gloucestershire: 21 February 1986
works
series
Crimson Chalice
- The Crimson Chalice (London: Heinemann, 1976) [Crimson Chalice: hb/]
- The Circle of the Gods (London: Heinemann, 1977) [Crimson Chalice: hb/John Rose]
- The Immortal Wound (London: Heinemann, 1978) [Crimson Chalice: hb/]
- The Crimson Chalice (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1980) [omni of the above three: Crimson Chalice: pb/]
individual titles (selected)
- The Finger of Saturn (London: Heinemann, 1973) [hb/]
- The Doomsday Carrier (London: Heinemann, 1976) [hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry