¡Rábanos Radiactivos! # 2112

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2112^nd Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3560, November 3, 2005.
Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital, 10830 Oxnard Street, North Hollywood, California 91606-5098.
Telephone: hospital(818) 763-8247; personal (818) 506-3159 * eMail:fredpatten@earthlink.net

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Rob Powell & I arrived later than usual for last week's LASFS meeting, but all we missed was the beginning of the minutes of the previous meeting. This was a good meeting for me, bibliographically speaking: Len & June Moffatt loaned me two murder mysteries, Kay Shapero brought me five new s-f novels from the Los Angeles (city) Public Library that are not in the LASFS Library, and Karl Lembke volunteered to get me books from the Los Angeles County Public Library. I will have plenty to read in my hospital bed for a long time to come.

Also, Rob Powell checked out the October 2005 Locus from the club library for me. It turns out to be of particular interest for LASFS history, because of a letter on page 46 by Jack Williamson written for the presentation of the Heinlein Award to Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle at the NASFiC. Williamson describes how he first met Heinlein at the LASFS meetings at Clifton's Cafeteria in 1940, and how Heinlein invited him and other s-f pros at the LASFS/in L.A. such as Kuttner, Hubbard, Cartmill, Boucher, McComas, Hamilton, Brackett, Julius Schwartz (a s-f literary agent), etc., to regular Saturday evening gatherings that they called the Mañana Literary Society at the Heinleins' home in Laurel Canyon; until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the day after their meeting on Saturday, Dec. 6, 1941. "The war scattered us, ending that good time." There is little here that we have not already known, but it is nice for LASFS egoboo to see it in print again from an author as respected as Williamson, in a magazine as widely read as Locus.

On the negative side, the LASFS parking spaces were auctioned off for November and none were donated to me, so my drivers will have to start finding curbside parking now. It was bound to happen eventually, and I am grateful to the fans who have bought me a parking space from July through October.

On Sunday, Rob Powell took me to the LASFS' Autumn Holiday Party. Charlie Jackson did his usual exemplary job of organizing it. It started around 2:00 p.m. with conversation about the upcoming special elections, and movies: The Black Cat, Curse of the Undead, The Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I ate Hallowe'en snacks, socialized and watched the movies, while Powell joined Tadao Tomomatsu & others in crushing soft drink cans to cash them in at the recycler's. (Enough cans had piled up that it kept four or five people all afternoon.) Powell also brought me a take-out dinner from Denny's. I got back to the hospital about 8:15 p.m. after a very enjoyable day.

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¡ZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Cover - (Jackson) Okay, this is too obscure for me to get the reference. I see the nr. 2111, but where is the Apa L title? Isn't Holmes wearing a too-modern hat? (It's fezzes that were outlawed in Turkey, not deerstalkers at Buckingham Palace.)

I Plead Gilty - (Gold) Okay, but why should I wait until after November 1^st to send Lloyd Carter my webpage's URL? Will there be an update to it then? ## I think that at least one of the guests attracted to the LASFS by the L.A. Times' article about us has been to more than one meeting. Who would know for sure? The Registrar? ## Your question about how Hazuki;s name (in Tsukuyomi Moon Phase) is written in Japanese is one that I could have answered easily before my stroke. Now all of my Japanese reference materials including my Japanese-English dictionary are at the UCRiverside Library. You can see her name in kanji yourself at the official website. It is something-moon, but "moon" is the only kanji that I recognize without needing to look it up. Incidentally, Hazuki's name is translated as "Princess Luna" several times in the subtitles; I missed what the Japanese dialogue actually said. ## It has been too long since I read the early Pern stores in magazine or novel form (and I lost interest after the first seven or eight) to remember the differences between the magazine versions and the book versions. I remember reviews and discussions of Pern over the years that talked about inconsistencies between the stories, and revised versions to correct the inconsistencies; so I do not know how today's Pern compares to the Pern of the 1970s in being more s-f than fantasy or vice versa. ## Current anime translations tend to translate "Yatta!" as "I did it!", "It worked !", "Yahoo!", or similar expressions of success. "Shimata!" is invariably translated as an expression of dismay for having made a mistake or having failed, though this can be anything from "darn!" to "oh, shit!" as well as "Oops!" or the more formal "I have made an error", depending on the translator and the personality of the character talking. ## In regard to grand operas in English as opposed to operettas, when is the last time Sir Arthur Sullivan's Ivanhoe was performed? It is little more than a footnote reference in biographies of Gilbert & Sullivan these days (although I see that there is a webpage devoted to it which answers most questions at: http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/other_sullivan/ivanhoe/ivanhoe_home.html). ## I always wondered why Peter Rabbit had such a realistic name in comparison with his siblings. Who would name their children Flopsy, Mopsy, or Cottontail? (Frank Zappa might, considering that he named his son Dweezil, or Nicolas Cage who has just named his kid Kal-el.)

Godzillla Verses #60 - (DeChancie) Hooray for Xena and Gabrielle! Solar astronomy has not yet used up its Sense of Wonder. ## Jack Vance's "The Dragon Masters" in Galaxy was illustrated by Jack Gaughan. I bought the cover painting at one of the Worldcons in the early 1960s that still had auctions of manuscripts and original art donated by the prozines. After I had bought it, Gaughan said, "Maybe I should have said that that painting was an experiment in aniline dyes, and it will fade away in a few years." Oops. Even though I hung it in a dark hallway to keep light from it, it soon faded into a pale ghost of the printed cover. ## I have previously cited the comment by Jim Harmon, who had a few good s-f stories published in the 1950s (mostly in Galaxy) before switching to pornographic novels, that writing porn was so much easier than writing s-f because the porno publishers just sent him paychecks without questions while the s-f editors were always demanding rewrites to improve the quality of his stories.

Fish Out of Water #142 - (Helgesen) The Institute for Research Into Human Happiness claims to know that dinosaurs became extinct from being killed by Big Game Hunters in flying saucers from the Magellanic Cloud because the founder of the church personally witnessed it in one of his earlier incarnations. I was given a copy of their Bible, The Laws of the Sun, when I was invited to their North American premiere of the anime theatrical feature of it they commissioned (they have enough parishioners in Japan that it was in the Top Ten box office charts for a couple of weeks), and I quoted several of what I considered its most memorable claims in Apa L at the time. (If it were not for my stroke, I would look up and cite the dist'ns.) See the IRH's website. Unfortunately, the illustrated webpage for their movie is no longer up; not that it showed the Big Game Hunters from the Magellanic Cloud, anyway.

Tenting the Title Here - (Cantor) The printing of my ¡RR! last week fades into illegibility at the sides, so it looks like A Gestetner Problem has not been completely fixed yet. ## I will take your word for my mis-summarization of Vance's 1962 "The Dragon Masters". Although I thought very highly of it and read it several times at the time, that was 40 years ago; so I obviously misremembered the details. It is time to read it again. Anyhow, when I read McCaffrey's first Pern story later in the 1960s, I was strongly reminded of "The Dragon Masters". ## In general, I have found Wikipedia to be very informative and accurate. There are several entries that note that they contain commonly-held beliefs that are as yet unconfirmed, or that more information on the topic is sought. I have only found one error in it so far, an obvious typo in the entry for File 770, which it says won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 2001 and 2001 (should be 2000 and 2001). MiRoscoe; this being Wikipedia, I can correct this myself! I just have.

Vanamonde #650 - (Hertz) Considering how fans have been complaining since the 1940s about the inaccurate depiction of fandom in the mass media, I hope that we would all hesitate to believe the media's bad news about anything/one else.

De Jueves #1450 - (Moffatt) I do not know whether a "doughnut" cushion for my wheelchair would help cure my sores or not. I am reluctant to spend money on new equipment without knowing whether it is really likely to improve things. ## Considering how photographs can be doctored today, we should all be prepared to argue with photos. But we can probably accept the photos of JFK wearing a top hat at his inauguration as genuine. ## Emily in Corpse Bride was poisoned. Most of the skeletons in Aaron Elkins' murder mysteries turn out to have been shot or stabbed. I do not recall Elkins going into what clues poisoning would leave on the skeletal remains of a victim. I had not known until I read it in Good Blood (thanks for loaning it to me) that a buried body can decompose into a skeleton in less than two weeks under certain conditions (I just realized that Corpse Bride strongly implies that Emily was just buried in the ground, without a coffin), but Emily still has most of her flesh so these forensic details do not seem to apply to her. Incidentally, I was amused that Good Blood has a minor character rather like an IRH parishioner; the tour group member who yammers to the paleoanthropological expert about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons having been bioengineered by friendly extraterrestrials. ## It has been too long since I read any Pern stories to remember any specific elements that were more magical than stfnal. But I do remember feeling that the last book or two that I read seemed more like science fantasy than science fiction. ## The string cheese at the Masoncon snack table was in a knotted form that I never saw before, and required cutting in a Gordian fashion. I did not notice whether the wrapper identified it as Armenian cheese, but there was a Russian smoked cheese alongside it with a wrapper in Cyrillic.

Oh, All Right!!! - (Lembke) Thanks for describing what steps the LASFS took when somebody parked in "my" parking space for two weeks in a row. This is the first answer that I have gotten. It seems desirable to have it clearly documented, both for the record and to serve as a precedent for action in the future if necessary. I had worried whether, since I have been brought to the LASFS during the past four months by both Rob Powell and Michael Burlake, one of their vehicles might be mistaken for an interloper's while in "my" space and it might be towed. ## I agree that, considering the current fad for treating vampires and werewolves as charismatic/sexy (see Dead and Loving It, by MaryJanice Davidson, and her other "funny vampire/werewolf stories" as light romantic fantasies), it should not be hard to write five pages on necrophilia in modern popular entertainment.

Long Time, No C #42 - (Zeff) No explanation is given in the first episode of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase of why a cute, little-girl Japanese vampire is living trapped in a castle in the Black Forest. That is the mystery which the handsome but incredibly dense Japanese boy hero must solve, and which is revealed to the audience later in the series (which moves to Japan in episode #2, which brings the German vampire girl Elfreida to Japan to kidnap Hazuki back to the Black Forest).

Merrie Maladies #32 - (Castora) I remember that at least one potential Apa L cover artist got tired of being turned down and left during the two months(?) or more that the O.C. was printing only covers by Schirm. ## Could Karen Anderson tell us more about the circumstances under which the Hoka stories were written & illustrated? I have always wondered why they started in Palmer's minimal-budget magazines and only moved to the more prestigious (and, I assume, higher-paying) F&SF after Palmer's magazines ceased publication. They were published as a hardcover collection by Gnome Press (another notorious minimal-paying operation) with new illustrations by Edd Cartier in 1957, which was several years after Cartier had otherwise stopped drawing s-f art. I know that Poul Anderson alluded on several occasions to having been well-paid more than once over the years for options on the Hoka stories for a TV cartoon series. Did he & Dickson write the stories just to get the concept into print to establish it for its TV rights potential? ## You raise the question again of whether the LASFS has actually had any cars towed away from our parking spaces, or merely threatened to do so so far. Can anyone answer this? Considering Ed Green's announcement to the membership a couple of weeks ago, our relations with the dentist next door have reached the point that LASFen (& visitors to the club) who park in the dentist's spaces should expect to get towed, and we have issued a reciprocal threat that we had better be prepared to carry out.