Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, March 10, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Twenty-First Distribution, LASFS Meeting #1439, March 11, 1965. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

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Not wishing to call down the wrath of Oscar upon my head, I hasten to submit to you this notice I received in yesterday's mail:

This is a prayer: "Trust in the Lord with all your might and he will light the way."

This prayer has been sent to you for good luck. The original comes from the Netherlands. You are to receive good luck in 4 days after you receive the letter. This is not a joke. You will receive it by mail. Please don't keep this copy. It must leave your hands in 90 hours after you receive it. Just send this copy and 20 like it to people who you think need good luck. This prayer has been sent around the world 9 times. A U.S. officer, General Edward, received $14,700 after he received the letter and General Patton received $60,000 but lost his wife because he tried to break the chain. In the Philippines General Thurman lost his wife in 5 days after he received the letter and failed it, then he won $75,000 first prize. Send this copy and see what happens in 4 days.

Seems to be most effective among the Army top brass. Any of you guys want to get rid of your wives and make upwards of $10,000 in the process? Incidentally, you all realize what you're going to have to do to avoid the curse, don't you? You're going to have to send "this copy" (and 20 like it)to your friends -- which means that I will be the only one left with a *complete* copy of this week's Distribution. Ahahaha!

More seriously, have any of you gotten a copy of this chain letter, or do you know of any other fans who have? I'm trying to find out whether I got it because I'm a fan, or whether I'm on some more mundane sucker list. The envelope is postmarked Trenton, New Jersey. Who do I know in Trenton?

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The emergence of an evil Donald Duck is a bad omen for American mores."

Prof. Giovanni Bertin, quoted in TIME, March 5, 1965, p. 41.

But I wasn't aware that Donald had been misbehaving more than usual lately!

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-- BEING COMMENTS ON THE 20TH DISTRIBUTION

Dick Lupoff -- The thing that impressed me the most when I first read A Journey in Other Worlds was that Astor came up with a pretty fair prediction of the freeway radar speed-trap, which was All Right for 1894. Of course, he also predicted steel highways, electrically-powered automobiles, multi-laned roads with the slow lanes on the left and the fast lanes on the right, etc. ## If you like Clifford Simak as a practitioner of rip-roaring space opera in the Doc Smith - JWC, Jr. school, don't miss his Empire, which was GALAXY NOVEL #7. Hoo boy, indeed! Speaking of Empire, whatever happened to John Campbell's unpublished novel-length manuscript from the '30's of that title, which as I recall was bought by Bill Evans at the ChiCon or DisCon auction? Would Canaveral be interested in bringing it out? Would Lancer or Ace or any of the paperback purveyors of "Science-Fiction Classics"? Assuming it's in the style of the Arcot-Morey-Wade and Aarn Munro stories, I'd like to read it. Incidentally, to correct your bibliographical information, the hardbound edition of Cosmic Engineers was published by Gnome Press, not Shasta. 1950, 224 pgs., $2.50, with a pleasant Edd Cartier dust jacket. Incidentally, what's Cartier doing these days?

Len Bailes -- To add my bit to the why-no-Coventry-in-SHAGGY-even-if-the-editor-wants-it discussion, I might point out that while the editor of SHAGGY is generally given a free hand with the zine, it is the LASFS club zine, and the editor should not publish material that he knows the majority of the club members disapprove of and do not want publicized in the club o-o. And Johnstone knew perfectly well that a large portion of the club holds anti-Coventry feelings and definitely would not want Coventry material in the LASFS fanzine; he went ahead and published the story in spite of this. I think that it was partly the emotional attitude of the deliberate defiance of club opinion that engendered the intensity of the reaction against the use of Jack's Coventry serial.

Bruce Pelz -- The reason I have no objections to taking Barney Bernard's money at Brag is that I consider that I'm earning it by sitting through the game with him, and putting up with such tricks as his demands that we change the rules of the game in the middle of a hand (I don't mind because I know he'll still lose the hand), or his holding everything up by refusing to play until he's delivered a particularly long and inane joke/pun.

Ed Baker -- Congratulations on finally printing on both sides of your sheet of paper. I have enough trouble stapling the bulky Distribution together each week with full pages; a three-page zine that uses three sheets of paper, all blank on one side, is quite an annoyance. I hope you continue to use both sides of the paper; you haven't lost any legibility.

Jack Harness -- I like to try to spread the contents of the Distributions evenly, so that there are no large concentrations of color or area-material. I think it would be a mistake to put all the material from the out-of-town contributors in one lump, or all the material from the CalTech CATS together -- it's indistinguishable enough even when it is separated. I also try to spread subject matter as much as possible, so we won't get all the material on Objectivism in one lump, and the discussion of Coventry-in-SHAGGY in another lump, etc. Does anybody feel that it would be better to gather material of like nature together rather than trying to homogenize it? Another reason I don't like precollated and stapled contributions is that I have to watch out for the staples when stapling the Distribution together. And then there'll be the fellow who says, "I've got a long m.c. to Van Arnam, so could you put my zine right after his in the Distribution?", which I couldn't do if all the out-of-town pages were already stapled together. I generally try to please, but I do prefer to arrange the collation order myself, so that if any special requests or occasions arise, I won't have to undo something that's already done.