Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, May 19, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Thirty-First Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1449, May 20, 1965. Address: 1925 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

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The Committee to Arrange a LASFS Picnic reminds you all that it's this Sunday, so don't forget it. To summarize the verbal instructions given during the last couple of Meetings; Date, Sunday, May 23rd. Time, 12:30 p.m. Place, Arroyo Seco Park (more detailed instructions follow). Lunch; 2 hot dogs (plus buns, mustard & relish, etc.) and potato salad, and leftovers if there are any and you're fast enough; plus whatever you bring yourself. Price, 50¢; all proceeds above costs go to Operation: Andy Capp.

It's a little tricky getting to the Arroyo Seco Park (or to the section we'll be using, anyway), so here's a breakdown of the route. Assuming you're coming in on the Pasadena Freeway, exit at Avenue 52 -- that'll be a left turn if you're coming from L.A., or a right turn if you're coming from Pasadena. Make a left onto Echo Street, another left at Figueroa, still another left onto Avenue 49, and drive to the end of Avenue 49, then turn right. This'll bring you into the Park where we'll be meeting, and into the parking area. The Arroyo Seco Park is a big place, extending to both sides of the Freeway, so you'll want to make sure you've got the right meeting place.

The Park provides barbecue pits and free firewood, which is one reason we're meeting there. So count on a hot-dog-roast type of picnic. The menu, as stated, includes 2 hot dogs each and potato salad, plus whatever you bring yourself; in other words, we're figuring on providing the basic staples of the picnic, and we're letting you bring your own frills in the form of drinks, cookies, marshmallows (for roasting), etc. Oh yes; we will try to provide ice for any soft drinks (ahem) anybody may bring.

We've got 29 names on our sign-up sheet, so far. Tonight's the last meeting before the Picnic, so if you're planning on attending, make sure your name gets on the list tonight. This is important, since the amount of food that'll be provided will depend on the number of names on this list -- anybody just deciding to drop in at the last minute if he feels like it will probably find that there's no food for him. Be warned. I might mention that no NEWSLETTER has been sent out announcing this Picnic; the 29 names we have are from members attending the Meetings. It's been quite a while since we've had any club outings of this sort; we'll hope to see most of you there.

-- BEING COMMENTS ON LAST WEEK'S DISTRIBUTION

Bill Glass -- This last year piled up a big crop of "Hugo" contenders in the Best Novel category, and I'm glad to see that, of the five books I enjoyed the most, three of them made it onto the nomination ballot. (The other two were The Killing Machine, by Jack Vance, and To Conquer Chaos, also by John Brunner.) The Whole Man is one of these five favorites, but I don't think it quiet comes up to The Wanderer, which is my first choice. The Wanderer has its human insights and poetic prose too, you know, and is so much greater in scope that it's downright overpowering. It's a close choice, thought; it's a shame (for their sakes) that three such magnificent novels as The Wanderer, Davy, and The Whole Man had to appear in the same year. If any of them had appeared in time for last year's race, now, it would've been a cinch to take the award. Incidentally, you mentioned that The Whole Man was based on two short novels that were in FANTASTIC UNIVERSE. That's true, but they originally appeared in Britain's SCIENCE FANTASY, and if you like good fantasy art at all, you'll have to look up Brian Lewis' cover illo for "City of the Tiger", on SF #32 (Dec. 1958). It's one of the best they ever ran. ## I think Apa L will be better off if Jack leaves his Kragher-mouse terms unexplained.

Dave Hulan -- After stenciling a 5-page letter from Boardman for the Cult's next FANTASY ROTATOR, on much the same subjects as usual, you'll forgive me if I don't feel like going into the same subject again here; too much is enough. Agreed that there's no one statement of John's with which I violently disagree, the sum total of them seems to add up to a lot more violence before integration is achieved than I hope is necessary. (And I don't consider myself unduly optimistic, either.) ## The only real advantage of ditto to mimeo that I can see is that it's easier to run multicolor illustrations by ditto. So if you're going to continue to use ditto (as you obviously are, having just bought your own), I hope you can find someone to do artwork for you. What about Katya? ## Yes, The Seven of Calvary is probably Boucher's best mystery, with all the Key Suspects clearly marked in the preliminary Dramatis Personae, and Boucher gleefully waving flags every time he introduces an Important Clue, and then daring you despite all this to figure out whodunit before he tells you. I didn't, despite the very logical explanation that tied everything up (plus footnotes, as I recall, so you could go back to the Important Clues and see where you should've Caught On). I also like The Case of the Crumpled Knave (if I'm connecting the right title with the right plot; it's been some time since I read them), in which the villain in the small group of suspects is satisfactorily unmasked, but then just as it looks as though the story is coming to an end, the detective jumps up and shouts, "Aha! I just accused him to make the real murderer feel complacent so he'd make a slip!", and Boucher then goes on to produce a still better reason why another of the suspects has to be the guilty party -- and he keeps on doing this until you begin to wonder whether he'll have any suspects at all left by the time he's through unveiling new and better interpretations of the evidence. Rather like Asimov, and his "I know where the Second Foundation really is." ## Well, we may drop the Poetry Dep't. per se and use the individual poems as fillers, and put the discussion on poetry under Articles, or something like that. I don't want to try to cram everything into specifically labeled compartments, though I do want some order so that we can make up an index or table of contents without going nuts. ## 1. Towton. Scene of defeat of Henry VI and his Lancastran faction, 1461. 2. Bran Mak Morn. Robert Howard's Celtic hero. 3. John Balliol. Competitor of Robert Bruce for the Scottish crown. 4. The Sarn Mother. Cloak of Aesir, Campbell. 5. Naseby. Scene of final defeat of Charles I's Cavalier army as an effective fighting force, 1645. 7. Vercingetorix. Gallic chieftain/leader; Caesar's last big opponent in the Roman conquest of Gaul. 8. Dirk Barnevelt. The Hand of Zei, de Camp's best Viagens story. 9. Subotai. One of Jenghiz Kahn's generals. 10. Mariola-Rogai. A land and a leader in The Well of the Unicorn; it'd be obvious to suspect something from there in any quiz you made up. So where's the River Syl?

Fred Hollander -- I notice that MAD has finally gotten around to satirizing "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." -- as "The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E."; what else? -- and they've also adopted CRUSH as the evil organization. That's okay; we'll remember that we read it here first. A.U.N.T.I.E., incidentally, stands for the Association for Unbelievably Nauseating Television and Idiotic Entertainment, which I presume means that they don't like the show. I'm not sure that I like the idea of MAD Magazine being more sophisticated than I am. I mean, I've never held myself up as a cultural snob or anything, but there's a limit to what I'll accept as my cultural superiors.

Rich Mann -- Glad to have a cover from Dave Heal. I'd suggest submitting one without an issue number, so there'll be no danger of its arriving too late for use, or conflicting with another already numbered for the same Distribution. If he wants to send it already run off, tell him to send about 50 copies, to play safe. If he wants to draw it on stencil or ditto master, we can run either; just make sure he packages the stencil or master so that it won't get damaged when he sends it through the mail. If he wants to just send us a sketch, it'll have to wait until we can persuade someone to put it onto stencil for us. He can send it to me. That cover all contingencies? ## I sure hope Vance follows up The Star King and The Killing Machine with another sequel.

Terry Romine -- The plot is a familiar one, but you've done an excellent job in summarizing it as succinctly as possible. If this is the first story you've ever tackled, I'll be extremely interested in seeing your future work after you've gotten a little more experience. You handle dialogue nicely. I suppose that's one result of writing your own comic strip; you're forced to learn to write short, distinct sentences to fit them into the speech balloons.

Dave Van Arnam -- You got an incomplete copy of that Dist'n because there were enough to send you one. That's one reason I acted as "callously" as I did, I knew that, at worse, you were only missing out on one or two zines out of the whole Dist'n. If it'd been a case of your missing the Dist'n completely, I might've reconsidered the priority rating -- though I dunno; I do believe it should be as I've stated it. Hopefully it won't ever come to that; we've had enough extra copies of the Dist'ns for the past month that we've been able to send one or two complete copies to Deserving Outsiders who happened to miss, such as Ted White. Hopefully we'll be able to keep this up. Everybody (even the Pelzes) is turning in 40 copies now, with the exceptions of Bill Glass & Mike Klassen, and we're working on them. (Of course, I could just officially raise the required number to 40, but I dislike being arbitrary about it if persuasion will work instead.) ## Ted's article (on the Main's move) is excellent, and we'll certainly consider it for the Apa L anthology. It may depend on whether we find too much else of Ted's that we like better, though; he's had so much good stuff.

Ted White -- Don't forget that when we fail to get a contribution from you, we can't tell whether it's the P.O.'s fault or yours (though we may have a pretty good idea). Both Boardman and Lupoff have resigned because of the difficulties of getting stuff cross-country weekly (and I'm glad Dick's reconsidered); you could have just decided to miss the week's Dist'n. of course, I know that whatever the reason is, you and Dave would like a copy of the Dist'n anyway, and I'm glad to send you copies when there are enough to go around. ## Next time you see Larry Shaw, you might ask him if he's ever considered publishing any of L. Ron Hubbard's books in the Lancer Science Fiction Classics series. Final Blackout would be a natural, though I'd like to see a collection of the Doc Methuselah stories. Or would Hubbard, as a great religious leader prefer to forget about his lowly former existence as a stf writer, and refuse permission to reprint any of his works? ## I just read Ted Johnstone's proposed novel for Ace, The Weapons of XXX, a couple of weeks ago. It's no "Hugo" contender, but it's better than some stuff Ace has published, and I'd guess that it has definite possibilities for sale. I'd rate it on about the same quality level as Carter's The Wizard of Lemuria, though it's stf and not fantasy; it'll make a good back-up half of a Double Book. For a first novel, it's not bad; it's about time Johnstone stopped talking and started doing. I wonder how many fans will be blossoming into pros now that Terry's at Ace?