Channing, Mark
Entry updated 28 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK soldier and author Leopold Aloysius M Jones (1879-1943); his twenty years in the military were spent mostly in India, and he was in active service during World War One; as an author he was most active in the 1930s. His only subject – including at least one study of Indian philosophy – is India and Tibet, and includes at least one non-fantastic novel, The Sacred Falls: A Novel of India (1939).
Channing is of sf interest for his Colin Gray sequence – comprising King Cobra (1933), White Python: Adventure and Mystery in Tibet (1934), The Poisoned Mountain (1935) and Nine Lives (1937) – about a secret service agent most of whose adventures involve Lost Worlds and other like mysteries. In King Cobra, the descendants of Prester John are discovered Underground in Tibet, with White Python: Adventure and Mystery in Tibet following immediately with even darker revelations; in The Poisoned Mountain, Gray must defend India against an exhalation of Poison gas from a volcano; and Nine Lives featuring an instantaneous lama (see Teleportation) and an Egyptian Cat goddess and a claimant to the throne of Genghis Khan – climaxes the series on the northern frontier. [JC]
Leopold Aloysius Matthew Jones
born London: 30 March 1879
died Amersham, Buckinghamshire: 19 December 1943
works
series
Colin Gray
- King Cobra (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1933) [originally serialized in the Daily Mail: Colin Gray: hb/]
- White Python: Adventure and Mystery in Tibet (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1934) [Colin Gray: hb/The Reiners]
- The Poisoned Mountain (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1935) [Colin Gray: hb/]
- Nine Lives (London: G G Harrap and Co, 1937) [Colin Gray: hb/]
links
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