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Johnstone, D Lawson

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1869-1905) Scottish author who published all his well-regarded fiction, mostly Young Adult novels, between 1888 and the turn of the century. His first work of sf interest is The Mountain Kingdom: A Narrative of Adventure (1888), a Jules Verne-style Lost-World tale whose young protagonists travel into Kisnia, the Kingdom of the Smoking Mountains (in Tibet), which is inhabited by descendants of ancient Greeks; our heroes attempt to thwart a rebellion against the monarch. The Paradise of the North (??? Young Folks' Paper; 1890; possibly cut, vt The Paradise of the North: A Story of Discovery and Adventure Around the Pole 1892) similarly uncovers a Lost World, but this time at the North Pole and inhabited by Norsemen. The White Princess of the Hidden City: Being the Record of Leslie Rutherford's Strange Adventures in Central America (1898) uncovers yet another, now in Central America and inhabited by Whites whose claim to the Americas – in accordance with nineteenth-century fantasies of racial justice – is found to antedate that of the Amerindians. The first two tales feature somewhat convoluted but well-constructed societies with some genuine Utopian features. [JC]

David Lawson Johnstone

born Brechin, Forfarshire, Scotland: 28 December 1869

died Edinburgh, Scotland: 13 November 1905

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