Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, May 5, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Twenty-Ninth Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1447, May 6, 1965. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

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As to THE BEST FROM APA L: Tom and I were hoping to get suggestions from all of you as to what to include, that we could doublecheck against our tentative list, that might help us make up our minds about certain items; rather than telling you in advance what we were planning on using. However, if that's how you'd prefer to work it, okay.

Artwork. This is mostly going to be cover art, because we haven't had that much interior art, aside from the comic pages and assorted fillos. For the covers, we were considering the first three covers printed by Don Fitch, Harnesses' covers for Distributions ##7, 10, and 24, Simpson's for #16, and the Bĵo-Simpson collaborations. The stencils for ##16 & 24 and the Bĵo-Simpson works have been kept, so there's no trouble about those, but if any of the earlier ones are to be reprinted, the stencils will have to be recut by the artist, or (in the case of the first three covers) they'll have to be reprinted by Don Fitch. Jack has given me the stencils to all of his Objectivist Mutated Mouse Musician cartoons; we will definitely use some, but not all, of them. Bĵo has had some fine dittoed artwork, not counting her comic pages, but anything by her will have to be redone by her, providing she's willing. Reproducing art is something that neither Tom nor I can do at all. As for interior cartoons to break up the monotony of solid text, I managed to salvage a lot of Dave Hulan's NIDDHOGGR stencils when he was coming over here to run them off on the LASFS Rex, so we can clip out the Atom fillos and run them in appropriate places. There have been fillos and interior drawings by others; would they be willing to restencil specific ones if we asked them? Dian? Fred Hollander, would you redraw any Blank covers? Can we get Steve Stiles to re-do his Dirty Capitalist cartoon from his only Apa L contribution? Ted White, we haven't gotten that cover yet that you said you were sending us (and if we don't use it by the end of May, we couldn't include it in this year's anthology); if you haven't sent it yet, it might be better to send just the stencil so that if we do want to reprint it, we'll be able to. We haven't yet settled on whether we should include any original material; I was considering asking Bĵo to do some illustrations for the portions of "Over the Sea to Skye" we'd be reprinting, and Jack to do some for "The Labyrinth of Valeron". As to how the full-page art should be presented, I favored putting it all together in an Artwork Dep't., while Tom would rather have it scattered a page here and a page there, to relieve the bleak appearance of pages of solid text.

This brings another point to mind. I'm arguing for reprinting the material in sections: Book Review Dep't.; Poetry Dep't.; Objectivism Dep't.; The Fan Scene (in L.A. & N.Y.) Dep't; Recipe [if there are enough of them0 Dep't.; etc., with each section published on a different shade of paper (none blinding). Tom is arguing for mixing it all up like a regular Apa L Distribution, so that there won't be too much of any one subject in one place; everything to be on less expensive white paper (except possibly the cover art reprints). This is something we could use your comments on, to determine our format.

Individual items. This is going to be a lot harder in some cases, though some parts will come easily, in the cases of self-contained articles. Lee Jacobs' first zine, describing how he came to join Apa L (Humor or Fan Scene Dep't., if we use the category system). Ed Cox's "Dear Griselda" lonely hearts column (Humor). Sam Russell's first zine, describing how his home had been burglarized (Fan Scene). my and Redd Boggs' pieces on Diana and the DupsupplyCo. (Fan Scene). Dian's article on torture (Articles). Dave Hulan & Ed Cox's first "drunken one-shot" (Humor or Fan Scene). Mike Decker's writeup of his run-in with the Pasadena police (Humor or Fan Scene). John Trimble's piece on the Great God Agnos (Humor, though frankly this was funnier as John told it in person than as he wrote it down there; should we ask him to revise it?). Al Lewis' review of John D. McDonald's "Travis McGee" series, and the comments on this (Book Review). Under Fiction, we have "The Labyrinth of Valeron", probably -- since it's so long and episodic, this may be cut if we need space anywhere. "Over the Sea to Skye", probably the first three chapters -- that's a good breaking point. The first of Van Arnam's "Zantain" fragments. Ted White, would you object to our reprinting your selection from Phoenix Prime? Bĵo's comic pages are probably too much to recreate in their entirety; we'll consider ourselves lucky if we can get a selection of the highlights. Possibly Milt Stevens' Roman Empire comedy.

Those are the only pieces we're more-or-less definitely planning on so far. We have a large tentative list, though. Something by Ted White and Bĵo; we just haven't decided on any one selection yet. Some reviews of the Bradbury plays; again, we have not decided which ones. Ditto with Dream Reports. Also Book Reviews; Tom isn't sure we should reprint any of Dick Lupoff's reviews since Dick has already had them all reprinted elsewhere. Selections on the Poetry and Objectivism discussions. The talk on carrousels.

There are a large number of contributors, such as Bruce Pelz, who do most of their writing in the form of mailing comments. It's going to be harder to extract coherent comments that will stand on their own, but we're considering a Mailing Comment Dep't. that will take select subjects and present different comments on them. We'll also be hunting for linos to use, and small self-contained items of a paragraph or two that can be used to fill out a page.

I think I'll close off my list of selections here, rather than developing it in any more detail. I'd prefer commentary from you less along the lines of, "Yes, I agree", than as outraged screams of, "What; you mean you're not considering thus & so!?" If there is anything not on this list that you think is worthy of reprinting, let us know about it. we'd like your suggestions on several points. For one thing, neither Tom nor I feel we'd be objective enough in selecting from among our own writings as to which (if any) are worth reprinting. We'd like your more unbiased opinions. For another, I know that I (for one) was never overly interested in the great Objectivism discussion, and I'm not sure I could do a good job on deciding which are the most cogent articles among all that's been said. I'm also more-or-less tone deaf when it comes to poetry. I'd like to know which pieces you thought were really good. Tom and I will be anxious to see anything you have to say on the subject of the anthology.

-- BEING COMMENTS ON THE PREVIOUS DISTRIBUTION

Rich Mann -- Oh, yes; all of us old Vargo Statten fans are familiar with the APAL ads. Did you see the one that had a testimonial from some fellow who'd been saving so much money since APAL helped him give up smoking that he now has to weed out his wallet periodically?

Dave Van Arnam -- Sorry you had to miss out on that complete Distribution, but I've already stated my reasons for deciding as I did. And besides a bit of scattered weeping that it did seem a shame, his first miss out of 25 Dist'ns, etc., I haven't seen any stated objection to my ruling that contributors and then attendees take precedence over non-contributing non-attendees even if such do have a good record. So the ruling stands.