LINKLATER, Eric (Robert Russell)

(1899-1974)

   Scottish writer proficient in various genres though best remembered for his novels, beginning with White Maa's Saga (1929). Much of his work is fantasy, like The Devil's in the News (1934) and many of the stories collected in God Likes them Plain (coll 1935), Sealskin Trousers (coll 1947) and A Sociable Plover (coll 1957). The Impregnable Women(1938) is a NEAR FUTURE rewrite of Lysistrata in which the women of Europe band together, go on sexual strike, and end a futile war (WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION). Similar in attitude were EL's WWIIconversation plays, notably The Raft and Socrates Asks Why (1942 chap), The Great Ship and Rabelais Replies (1944 chap) and Crisis in Heaven: AnElysian Comedy (1944 chap), which employed fantasy elements as didactic pointers. His two children's novels, The Wind on the Moon (1944) and The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (1949), are both attractive fantasies, inthe latter of which Davy Jones and all the drowned pirates under the sea are discovered guarding the great knots that tie latitudes and longitudes together to keep the world from splitting. A Spell for Old Bones (1949) is a fantasy set in a mythical 1st-century Scotland. In A Terrible Freedom (1966) a man finds the characters of his dream world taking over the realone.

   JC

   See also: The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION .