Charles G. Finney (December 1, 1905 — April 16, 1984) was an American fantasy novelist and newspaperman. His full name was Charles Grandison Finney, evidently in honor of the famous evangelist Charles Grandison Finney.
Finney was born in Sedalia, Missouri and served in China with the United States Army's 15th Infantry Regiment (E Company) 1927—1929. In his memoirs, he notes that his first novel (and most famous book) The Circus of Dr. Lao was conceived in Tientsin in 1929. After the Army, he worked for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona, 1930—1970, as an editor.
Various of Finney's papers, with correspondence and photographs, are collected at the University of Arizona Main Library Special Collections, Collection Number: AZ 024, Papers of Charles G. Finney, 1959-1966, including typed manuscripts of "A Sermon at Casa Grande", "Isabelle the Inscrutable", "Murder with Feathers", ""The Night Crawler", "Private Prince", "An Anabasis in Minor Key", "The Old China Hands", and "The Ghosts of Manacle".
Finney's work, especially The Circus of Dr. Lao, has been highly influential on subsequent writers of fantasy. Ray Bradburyadmired the novel and anthologised it in his collection The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; Bradbury'sSomething Wicked This Way Comes shares with Dr. Lao the setting of a supernaturalcircus. Arthur Calder-Marshall's The Fair to Middling (1959), Tom Reamy's Blind Voices (1978), , Peter S. Beagle'sThe Last Unicorn(1968) andJonathan Lethem's Chronic City (2009) were all influenced by Finney's work.