#2217

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2217^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3665, November 8,2007.
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

§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(+)§(*)§(

Last Wednesday, I got my Loscon 34 program participant's schedule. I am on four panels; three on Saturday and one on Sunday (which at 3:30 p.m. must be one of the final events of the convention). My first panel, Saturday at 12:30 p.m., sounds the most fun: "The Worst SF Novel Ever". Does The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis count? It has been professionally published now; http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Argon-Jim-Theis/dp/0809562618. Xanthan Gumm by Robin Reed should certainly be in the running, along with Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate and The 0^th Dimension by Kenneth C. "I Hate Humans" Eng. I will also nominate Solarion by Edgar Fawcett, the worst Furry novel I have ever read and a monumentally bad s-f novel (anti-science, actually) as well, published in 1889. It is a histrionic ripoff of Frankenstein, in which an atheistic scientist utilizes electric shock therapy to give a "beautiful" golden retriever, Solarion, intelligence and speech. The dog spends the rest of the novel whining about how intelligence is worthless without a soul, he doesn't have a soul because only God can make a soul, he would be better off dead than a soulless monster, having a perfect body is as ashes next to being an abomination without a soul, etc., etc., yadda yadda yadda. The dog finally forces the atheistic scientist, who is impersonating a God-fearing Christian to inveigle his way into Proper Society (depicted as going to High Mass every Sunday, and spending the rest of the week playing tennis, riding to hounds, attending cultural soirees, and going to formal dinner parties - the type where it takes your servants two hours to dress you properly), to publicly kill him in a manner that ruins the AS socially. I had to go to the Central Library in downtown L.A. to read Solarion on microfilm, and it was one of the biggest wastes of time of my life. Thomas Monteleone's Seeds of Change is of Hugo-Award caliber compared to any of these. What are your nominations for The Worst SF Novel Ever?

On Wednesday evening, my sister Sherrill took me to the LASFS' Autumn Holiday Party at Freehafer Hall. The program by Charlie Jackson consisted of all three movie versions of The Phantom of the Opera, lots of Hallowe'en candies and other nibblements, and appropriate socializing. Most attendees wore Hallowe'en costumes; Sherry provided me with a jack-o'lantern pin to wear on my black T-shirt. If it were not for the recent wildfires, I would have suggested we have another Autumn Holiday tradition: a Guy Fawkes bonfire.

Thursday evening, Sherry brought me to the LASFS meeting. Loscon 34 is gearing up; Bill Ellern & Dr. Arizona were promoting $15 Loscon propeller beanies. The program was not the tribute to Mr. Wizard, but the first planning discussion for the LASFS' diamond anniversary in 2009.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Cover - (DeChancie) Smog, on a particularly bad day.

I Stridently Jubilate - (Gold) I have been shocked by the inaccuracies that I have noted on several museums' caption cards, from here in L.A. to Australia. I do not remember any specific examples other than a coin of Edward VII (1901-1910) that I think was misdated to the 1860s or 1870s despite the year on the coin itself, but they were all blatantly obvious, comparable to the Internet Movie Database's listing of a movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as having been released in 1938. ## Bleach (the anime) has an official American website, all in English. The Japanese logo is also in English, followed by the word Romanized in katakana as . See the Japanese website. How would you distinguish it from "breach"? ## Now that I have Bookmarked Barry's URL link to his De Profundis website, I have not needed to type the URL individually to get to it any more. ## The Australian boxing kangaroo flag may be officially unofficial, but it has been endorsed and displayed by such official organizations as Australia Post. The boxing kangaroo design has become so widespread that when I looked for any other kangaroo flag designs on the Internet, all that I found were references to the boxing kangaroo flag as the most popular variation. Unfortunately, all the designs that I had for a new national flag featuring a kangaroo (usually stylized) were in books and magazines that are at the UCRiverside Library now. Other kangaroo designs may have been mostly pre-1983 when the boxing kangaroo flag was introduced as a sporting flag only, and therefore did not have to wait for an "official" endorsement to be used by the public.

Vanamonde #753 - (Hertz) That snail is wearing its propeller beanie on its shell, not its head. It seems superfluous there. ## I wonder if the Japanese woman who is selling $800 skirts that transform into Coca-Cola vending machine disguises has cleared the rights to the vending machine images with the Coca-Cola company?

1 Panama Canal - (Cantor) Reasonable explanation? This is the LASFS; we don' need no steenking reasonable explanations.

De Jueves #1555 - (Moffatts) There is a Pivo beer website which includes a link to a Japanese TV commercial for beer for little children, but the word does not seem to mean anything in Japanese. ## My hospital has waxed its floors three or four times during the 2+ years that I have lived here, so presumably every six months or so. ## There is a complete list of Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone murder mysteries on Amazon.com, most of which the L.A. Public Library seems to have. I am waiting now for #10, The Shape of Dread, and #11, Trophies and Dead Things, the next two in the series that I have not read yet. ## The German version of F.P. 1 Antwort Nicht is available on DVD in Germany, but as far as I can tell from the Amazon.co.de listing (I do not read German), it is in PAL and it does not have English subtitles. The English and French versions do not seem to be available on DVD yet.

Godzilla Verses #163 -- (DeChancie) Harmagedon is a great 1983 anime theatrical feature. Most of the anime clubs have shown it to death, but when you return to Los Angeles we should be able to get someone to show it again for you. The nighttime cityscape was probably meant to be generic of any modern metropolis, however.

Fish Out of Water #247 - (Helgesen) If I recall correctly, that was the defendant's attempted defense; that corporations had been advertising "lifetime" guarantees or warranties for decades and the phrase was therefore in the public domain, and that the typography used in the advertisement was irrelevant. The court ruled for the prosecution; that by using the Life and Time magazine logos the defendants clearly meant to confuse the public into believing that its product's "LifeTime" warranty had been endorsed by the Time-Life, Inc. corporation. ## I can attest that I was required to take off my shoes whenever I entered the Golds' home.

Oh, All Right!!! - (Lembke) How long can wines age before they turn into vinegar? Wines subjected to interstellar travel should not be aged for too long.

Some books that I have read lately:

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones
Transmutation Now by Phil Geusz
The Tell-Tale Horse by Rita Mae Brown