ST CLAIR, Margaret

(1911-)

   US writer, usually under her own name, though she wrote a series of elegant stories in the 1950s as Idris Seabright and published 1 tale in 1952 as Wilton Hazzard. Her sf career began with "Rocket to Limbo" forFantastic Adventures in 1946, and by 1950 she had published about 30 stories, most of them vigorous adventures in a strongly coloured idiom; a magazine series, the Oona and Jik tales, appeared in Startling Stories and TWS 1947-9. But, even though this early work seems at first glanceconventional enough, and obedient to PULP-MAGAZINE expectations, a singularly claustrophobic pessimism could soon be felt. The Seabright stories - which appeared almost exclusively in FSF 1950-59, and for which MSC became temporarily better known than for the works published under herown name - were smoother-textured than her pulp adventures and oriented more towards FANTASY, but at the same time less daringly subversive of the central impulses of sf: to solve problems, to penetrate barriers (CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH), to gain control. In MSC's central work, theseimpulses were consistently treated in terms of pathos.Her first novel, Agent of the Unknown (1952 Startling Stories as "Vulcan's Dolls"; 1956dos), is perhaps the definitive MSC text, packing into its brief compass a remarkably complex plot whose protagonist only seems to represent the typical HERO of SPACE OPERA. Though he remembers nothing before the age of 14, and though his actions enable the human species to begin a geneticleap forwards, it is eventually revealed that he is not a SUPERMAN in the making but a severely limited ANDROID - a toy of the godlike Vulcan who appears in other MSC tales. His entrapment in a plot he cannot understand until too late, his love for a human woman who is soon killed, and his final realization that his puppet actions have released humans into a state far beyond his comprehension - all generate a sense of extraordinary constriction, to which the elegiac conclusion of the tale adds a powerful emotional glow. MSC's other early books - The Green Queen (1955 Universe Science Fiction as "Mistress of Viridis"; 1956 dos), The Games of Neith(1960 dos), Message from the Eocene (1964 dos) and Three Worlds of Futurity (coll 1964 dos) - sometimes feature more vigorous female protagonists, but all in their various ways explore similar territories. Published from the very heart of popular sf, they represent a fascinatingdissent from within.Her later novels, though ostensibly more ambitious, perhaps lose some of the nightmare urgency of her early work, though both Sign of the Labrys (1963), set underground after a nuclear HOLOCAUST, andThe Shadow People (1969), also set in a netherworld of caverns under the daylit world, effectively present POCKET UNIVERSES without - significantly - moving in the expected manner towards any convincing sort ofbreakthrough into the larger world. The Dolphins of Altair (1967) uses intelligent dolphins as an emblem of humanity's self-devastating relationship with the planet Earth, and The Dancers of Noyo (1973) overcomplicatedly deals with androids, post-holocaust California, Native Americans and political oppression. Later stories appear in Change theSky, and Other Stories (coll 1974) and the excellent The Best of Margaret St Clair (coll 1985) ed Martin H. GREENBERG, which includes the delicately savage "Wryneck, Draw Me" (1980), the best of MSC's later anatomies of the underside of progress.

   JC

   About the author: Margaret St Clair (1986 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr.

   See also: MYTHOLOGY; OUTER PLANETS; PERCEPTION; ROBOTS; UNDER THE SEA; WOMEN SF WRITERS.