¡Rábanos Radiactivos! ... es no. 2243

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2243^rd Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3691, May 8, 2008.
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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Last Thursday my sister Sherrill took me to the LASFS meeting. There was no cheese this week. There were two obituaries; for s-f artist John Berkey and for s-f composer BeBe Barron. Thanks to the super auction, not much else happened before Sherry & I had to return to the hospital for the 10:00 p.m. curfew.

As updater of the Loscon history, I note that the new Loscon 35 webpage says "Loscon 35" with the "35" in archaic lettering, but definitely not Roman numerals. Shall I then record this year's as Loscon 35 rather than Loscon XXXV?

Anthro #17, May - June 2008, should be online by now with my Furry book reviews.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Cover - (DeChancie) Optimi-Pessimism: a new philosophy.

I Tidy Up Kinkajous - (Gold) Charlie Jackson asked me for the reviews of books in the LASFS Library for the LASFS website, and said that he wants to format them with art before submitting them for addition to the website, so I do not want to send Barry the reviews separately and forestall whatever CLJII is working on. The weblink to Anthro in general that I have already published many times in Apa L is the only link there is; I cannot send one to my reviews alone. Sorry. You will have to add the general link with a note to look for my reviews on the Table of Contents; and my reviews in back issues in the Archives. ## Thanks for all the work that Barry & you have been doing for the LASFS website. It looks better each time I click on it. There are still some errors that we have discussed and I look forward to seeing them corrected eventually.

Vanamonde #779 - (Hertz) Is chess one of the Olympic Games? It is in the Soviet 1980 "Nu Pogodi" animated cartoon set at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. ## To me, an adventure novel has adventure and little else. If it has more, it is more than an adventure novel. I would call the Harry Potter novels or Watership Down more than adventure novels, although they are certainly that, too. Heinlein's Double Star is more than an adventure novel since its protagonist is changed profoundly, whereas in the Heinlein juveniles the protagonists are largely unchanged by their adventures.

Back Page Colophon - (Cantor) "Furry Fandom IS NOT Science Fiction Fandom." Of course not. But it is a subset of s-f fandom, based on both s-f and fantasy although it is true that more stories with talking animals are fantasy than s-f. But there are a lot of Furry stories with bioengineered intelligent animals in futuristic settings. And many Furry fans also attend s-f conventions, although probably few Fursuiters do.

De Jueves #1581 - (Moffatts) CLJII will doubtlessly be glad to show the Warner Bros. "I Haven't Got a Hat" and the Sniffles cartoons at the LASFS. ## Cthulhu is getting positively plebian. (What would negatively plebian be; aristocratic?) ## You have published that Freefall strip before, but it is one that merits frequent reprints. Florence Ambrose, as a bioengineered anthropomorphic wolf, is an example of Furry literature that is s-f, not fantasy. ## A quotecover these days would need to quote from a half dozen or more dist'ns instead of just one to get enough good quotes; alas.

Godzilla Verses #189 - (DeChancie) Don't wait for an editor to ask you for a story if an Apa L cover gives you an idea for one. Write it anyway and send it in! "Where do you get your ideas?" We should be honored. ## Publishing your own independent comic strip on the Internet for a few years seems to be the latest way to build up credentials to break into the comic book field. In the 1970s & '80s cartoonists published their own comic books, but today there are no distributors left that will take them. Or get an idea for an intellectual comic strip/book and publish it as a literary magazine. The New Yorker just published an article about a comic book superhero artist from the 1970s working as a security guard in 2004 who got the idea of producing a comic book version of the government's 9/11 report to make it easier to understand by the public. It has been published as a hardcover book and he has a contract to produce a "sequel" about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wonderlust - (Frame-Gray) Paranormal romances must be popular or there would not be so many of them. Many of the series are up to four or five volumes by now. If they did not sell, their publishers would have cancelled them after only one or two. I am impressed by the con reports of the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention that emphasize all the parties and brunches that the publishers hosted for the writers and fans. No Furry convention has publisher support, and the big s-f cons only get Scientology's Hubbard publisher. Romantic Times seems to be supported by almost a dozen major romance publishers.