LASKI, Marghanita

(1915-1988)

   UK writer, one of the most prolific contributors of material (over 250,000 wordslips) to the Oxford English Dictionary. Though she was not an avowed author of sf, her work often edged snappishly into the fantastic, and she early demonstrated an uncircumscribed sense of good writing in The Patchwork Book: A Pilot Omnibus for Children (anth 1946), whose sf contents included several stories by H. Rider HAGGARD, Edgar Allan POE, Jules VERNE and others. Love on the Super-Tax (1944) borders onsf in its depiction of a wartime transformation of the UK. Tory Heaven (1948) is a class-ridden spoof UTOPIA set in an ALTERNATE-WORLD UK inwhich the Conservative Party has won the 1945 election. The Victorian Chaise Longue (1953) is a fantasy in which two invalids, 100 years apart,switch identities. The Offshore Island (written 1954; 1959 chap) is a strongly pacifist sf play set in a UK continuing to suffer the effects of nuclear HOLOCAUST after 10 years of war. It stingingly condemns (while linking) the sexual prudery and political ruthlessness of the great powers. Two volumes of nonfiction - Ecstasy (1961) and Everyday Ecstasy (1980) - deal sympathetically with categories of experience often usedwithin the genre as agents or symbols of transition to a better world.

   JC

   Other works: The Tower (1974 chap US).