David Lasser

David Lasser was an American writer and political activist, born in Baltimore to Jewish immigrant parents from Russia, who on April 4, 1930, co-founded the American Interplanetary Society together with George Edward Pendray and other science fiction writers, becoming the organization's first president. Before turning to rocketry advocacy Lasser worked as managing editor of Hugo Gernsback's science fiction magazines, and in 1931 he published The Conquest of Space, described as the first nonfiction, English-language book devoted to the subject of spaceflight, helping introduce serious discussion of rocket travel to an American readership. The society Lasser helped found was renamed the American Rocket Society in 1934 and later became, through further mergers, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Lasser's career afterward moved into labor activism during the Great Depression, where he served as president of the Workers Alliance of America, a national organization representing unemployed workers.