Beschreibung:

A Collection of Rocketry and Science Fiction by David Lasser Author: Lasser, David Place: Various places Publisher: Various publishers Date: 1931-1946 Description: Five items by Lasser comprising. With Dr. D. H. Keller, “The Time Projector.” Wonder Stories, July 1931: pp. 152-189, 273-275; and August 1931: pp. 388-419. 7x10", two complete issues in original pictorial wrappers. “By Rocket to The Planets.” Nature magazine, November 1931: pp. 275-278, 230. Illustrated with 3 fantasy drawings by Garnet Jex (magazine lacks one unrelated leaf of text). “The Rocket in the Next War?” Everyday Science and Mechanics, March 1932: pp. 326-328. 8½x11”. Complete issue in original pictorial wrappers. Private Monopoly: The Enemy At Home. New York: Harper, 1945. 306 pp. Original cloth in Dust Jacket. First Edition. Lasser, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants was an Army veteran with an engineering degree from MIT. While managing editor of Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories, he formed the American Interplanetary Society and in 1931 wrote the first realistic English-language book on Space Travel. That same year, he published his only Science Fiction contribution about a “master computer” which predicted “a great war that would decimate the earth.” He followed that with two articles on rockets as Space vehicles and military weapons - his last writings on the subject. By 1932, as the economic Depression wracked America, Lasser began a decade of social activism that absorbed so much of his time and energy that Gernsback fired him. At the same time, he felt out of step with the scientists and engineers who joined his Interplanetary Society with a passion for rocketry, objecting - like Robert Goddard, who at first declined to join the group - that fantastic visions of Space Travel would subject their practical experiments to popular ridicule. Lasser soon resigned as President of his organization, which in 1934 was renamed the American Rocket Society under the more sympathetic leadership of co-founder G. Edward Pendray. Lasser went on to found a Socialist-oriented “Workers Alliance” to unionize New Deal workers and was denounced as a Communist by right-wing Congressmen. He spent the rest of his life as a crusading social worker – his 1946 book was an attack on corporate monopoly. He was belatedly honored, before his death, by the American Rocket Society as its original founding father. Lot Amendments Condition: Good to very good. Item number: 319719