Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, October 6, 1966. Intended for Apa L, 103nd Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1521, October 6, 1966. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

Well, Ed Baker was safely moved into 1825 Greenfield Avenue last weekend, and it looks as though this fannish establishment will therefore continue to be one for some time longer. The house is currently rather cluttered, since most of Jerry Jacks' belongings are still packed away in odd corners here, until he finds a permanent address somewhere up in the Bay Area. Not that I mind too much; it gives us an extra few weeks to play his records before he comes to pick 'em up.

Ed is proving to be a model roommate; the easiest person in the world to get along with. This is because he's never here. I don't think I've seen him for a total time span of over an hour since we got through moving his goods in last weekend. He leaves for work in the morning about the time I do -- around 7:15 -- and doesn't come back home until midnight or later. What he does, I don't know; that's his business. But for someone like me, who likes plenty of solitude to get lost in a novel, or concentrate on typing a fanzine, it's just ideal. The only drawback is that I might begin to get tired of my own cooking after a week or two, but since Ed assures me that his culinary skills are no more developed than are mine, I don't suppose it really matters. Nothing is entirely perfect.

And apparently the Booby Hatch will not disintegrate with Ed's removal, either. Ed's old room there will be occupied by Ardis, who is a friend of Sue, who it seems has been living there for the last month. I have a feeling that I've drifted out of contact with fannish social life in the Fan Square Mile since I left for the WorldCon. Ardis? Sue?

I've just received the 1966 catalog of British children's books, for ordering, and it's available to anybody who wants to look through it. Frankly, there doesn't appear to be anything new in the way of children's fantasy or science-fiction, except for a new Dr. Who book (Doctor Who and the Crusaders, by David Whitaker, 12/6) and an anonymously edited s-f anthology, Worlds Apart, "over 400 pages ... exceptional value for eleven year olds and over", at 15/-. For those of you who haven't added the Borrower books to your collections yet, though, they're now all available in one volume, The Borrowers Omnibus, at an unfortunately stiff $6.25. This contains the illustrations by Diana Stanley from the English editions, so it probably won't be available otherwise here in the U.S. When you think about it, though, $6.25 isn't at all an unreasonable price to pay for all four Borrower novels, illustrated, in a hardbound edition. Anyhow, I have the catalog here for browsing through.

Well, the theater party to see the Savoy-Artes' production of "The Mikado" is all set up. I've reserved a block of fourteen tickets in the LASFS' name -- there were about that many people who said that they're "seriously considering" going, so between dropouts and additions, that should be enough to take care of everybody. Hopefully, I'll get a more definite list at tonight's Meeting. The performance is at the Robert Lee Frost Auditorium, at 4401 Elenda Street in Culver city; a rough map is provided at the right for your convenience. The tickets are $2.50 apiece, and will be held for us at the box office up to 15 minutes before show time, which is at 8:30 p.m. Come on along and have a fun evening.

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-- BEING COMMENTS ON THE PREVIOUS DISTRIBUTION

Dave Van Arnam -- Subscription weekly fanzines? Roscoe! Well, I'll wait and see how you and Andy do on selling subscriptions before I go to any trouble trying to peddle RR. Offhand, I don't think I'd care to handle the bookkeeping. ## What do people mean when they say that The Black Magician is "unsalable in its present form"? That the plot has to be tackled from another angle or writing style to be salvaged, or that the whole basic idea stinks and nothing at all can be done with it? Can you save the plot, or are you going to just drop it entirely and work on something else?

Whoops; forgot to mention it above. The proposed fannish tour of Busch Gardens this coming Sunday has been called off, due to a general feeling that the schedule was set without enough notice. Okay, so what would most of you suggest as a generally agreeable date?

Bruce Pelz -- Okay, I'll ask it. What happened to "A Way of Life"? ## Come now; my tenacity had nothing to do with our discussion of killing off Apa L. What I agreed to was that if Apa L continued to decrease in quality until it became absolutely awful, I would help to give it a clean death rather than stubbornly try to drag it along with Dist'ns consisting of 9 or 10 pages of crud each week. I never said anything about not keeping up my own productivity for as long as Apa L is alive, or about not trying to build Apa L back up again -- in fact I stated how I invited various out-of-towners at the TriCon to become contributors, although I admit I don't think there's much chance of their doing so. But until the bitter end (if it comes), I'm going to be doing my best to keep turning out RR on its usual schedule, as my little bit to keep us on our feet.

June Konigsberg -- LASFS Meeting no 1592 is a little too far in the future to plan for -- well over a year off -- but your idea of a fannish Columbus Day celebration gives me a notion for a thematic costume ball, in which everybody comes as some famous stfnal Columbus -- Pelham, Blake, Renfrew, & Endicott from van Vogt's "Far Centarus"; some of the characters from Heinlein's "Universe", or Norton's The Stars Are Ours; Elliott Grosvenor or any of the rest of the crew of the Space Beagle; Mr. Bedford or Mr. Cavour, The First Men in the Moon; Mike Novac and Amy Stuart, from Kornbluth's Takeoff, et cetera. It's a theme, if we ever need one. ## I was unfortunately unable to get to the L.A. County Fair this year; the free day that I'd allotted for it was spent instead in persuading Ed Baker to move in here and save my home. I do feel that my time was better spent this way, at least as far as I'm concerned. Len Bailes tells me that they didn't have stacks of free literature at the Fair this year, anyhow, so I don't feel quite so bad in missing it. ## I checked the Library of Congress' listings under Gruelle, John, and was unable to find any other work of his that sounded as though it had even an off chance of being another Noom book. So I guess it was a one-shot novel. Most of his works seemed to be along the lines of Raggedy Ann and the Hoppy Frog, and the like.

Dave Fox -- The thing that most impressed me about Noom when I read it was when the kids built their toy spaceship out of the old box and it actually flew away with them, and their grandparents saw them sailing off into the sky, Grampa immediately grabbed another box out of the junkpile, fixed it up the same way, and took off to rescue them. It was one of the few instances I've ever seen in which the author introduces the young protagonists' parents into their fantasy world in an active role (Baum being the other big exception); usually adults are left out of such fantasy worlds altogether, or only play an unconscious part. I think this is what contributes heavily to the "atmosphere of realism" you mention; the adults are there and consciously so, so it can't just be a kid's dream or daydream. ## Dian's plea to keep some sort of Apa L type apa going is all very well & good; the obvious answer is that, if there's enough interest in such a thing to create a new apa after Apa L's demise, why should Apa L die in the first place? I don't think that subscribers are needed -- and I speak as the fellow who's putting the most into the group, supplying the paper & materials for our covers, tables of contents, etc. What Apa L needs isn't money, but new blood.

Ruth Berman -- I have vague recollections of other s-f stories in which Leonardo was mentioned marginally, but nothing I can pin down. I believe he was included in a list of Earth's great savants who were really benevolent Martians helping us along the road to civilization, in a story in one of Conklin's later anthologies, but I haven't time to go through all of them right now. Wasn't there also a mainstream novel ten years or so ago, in which the protagonist, a man from our time, went back to Renaissance Italy and either became Leonardo or became his friend and provided his inspiration? I recall reading a review of it by Schuyler Miller. And there was a story that I'm sure I read in F&SF, but when...? Doggone it, this is why in any classification scheme for s-f, you're going to have to concentrate on a large & complete job of subject headings, rather than trying to shelve the works under some system of all-inclusive numbers. You certainly wouldn't want a section of "Leonardo da Vinci" stories on your shelf, numerically arranged -- but if that's a pet subject of yours, you can easily add it to your subject index file.

Fred Hollander - I think that Apa L should be played out, one way or another, before any definite plans are made regarding SHAGGY. As to all the various suggestions for modifying Apa L, turning it into a publication to break neos and others into publishing fandom, etc., I don't think they could work. I suspect that if you tried fooling around with Apa L, to give it any Purpose or Theme, you would just succeed in killing it off all the quicker. As long as Apa L is continuing, I don't think you can really get enough support to make SHAGGY the fanzine it should be. Frankly, considering the quality of Ellie's stencil cutting, and of your layout (or lack of same) and often faint printing, I'd just as soon that you not try to revive SHAGGY at this time. SHAGGY shouldn't be turned into an experimental fanzine, revived every year or so and forced along for a couple of poor issues to see if The Time Is Right for its rebirth, and then folded again. Do your experimenting in HIPPOCAMP; if you can get it up to SHAGGY's level of quality, then I'll agree to seeing SHAGGY revived. But right now, I don't think you can bring it off, and I'd rather not see another bad issue added to SHAGGY's record.

Alan Shaw -- I don't really have any comments to make here, but I just wanted you to know that I am enjoying your views of MIT life.

Bĵo Trimble -- I didn't sleep through the Lamplighters' entire performance of "The Mikado"; the 2nd Act was quite good, even if they didn't go into all the encores they should have. And sleeping through parties is nothing new to me; I don't think that getting older has anything to do with it -- unless you mean we're all out of our teens, and we've been there for a long time now.