Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, July 14, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Thirty-Ninth Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1457, July 15, 1965. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

#######################################################################################################

The WesterCon is barely over, but it's already time to start making final plans for the trip to the WorldCon in London next month. Last week I got my confirmation of a room reservation at the Con hotel, the Mount Royal; Dave Fox stayed there when he was in Europe a couple of months ago, and he says it's a good place.

I've signed up with Judy Blish's charter group flight to & from London, but as it looks as though she may not get the legal minimum number of people to make up the group, I've also made alternate arrangements of my own through the Thomas Cook travel agency here in Los Angeles. (I can cancel the reservations with Cook up to within 24 hours of the departure time without any penalty, so the two sets of reservations won't cost me any extra -- though I do hope that if Mrs. Blish's charger flight falls through, she'll return my deposit before I have to make the final payment for the Cook flight; my bank account won't stand having too much money tied up at once.) My arrangements with Thos. Cook are to leave Los Angeles via American Airlines at 10a.m., Sunday, August 22nd, arriving in New York at 5:55 p.m. that same day. I'll spend three days in New York, visiting my sister Loel, seeing the Fair, meeting NY Fandom again, etc.; I leave at 10 p.m. on Wednesday the 25th via BOAC f or London, getting there at 9:35 the next morning. I haven't worked out an itinerary for Europe yet -- the LonCon starts on the 27th and lasts through the 30th; my reservations at the Mount Royal are from the 26th through the 31st -- so I'll probably improvise after the Con's over, depending partly on the plans of the other fans there. I definitely want to get into Wales and Ireland, and I'd like to get into France if I have time; but I don't intend to rush around so fast that I don't really see anything. Wherever I go, I'll have to be back in London on Saturday, September 11th, to catch a Pan American Polar Flight that'll leave at noon and get me back to LA at 5:20 p.m. My schedule'll be about the same if the Blish charter flight does come off; that's an Air India flight leaving New York on Thurs., Aug. 26th at 8:30 p.m., and leaving London for the return trip on Tues., Sept. 14th at 1:15 p.m. The Blish flight would give me an extra day in New York, but would get me to London just as the Con is beginning, without any time to catch my breath; it'd give me a couple extra days in Europe, but I wouldn't get back to LA until three days after my vacation time from the Library w as all used up. The arrangements I made through Cook's are better tailored to my schedule; the Blish flight would be cheaper and I'd be flying to & from London with fans rather than strangers. It's about a toss-up as to which I'd prefer. Right now, I'm just waiting for definite word one way or the other on the Blish flight, so I'll know whether to cancel or confirm my arrangements with Cook. As to price, incidentally, the whole trip on the Cook play will cost about $720, while the Blish group flight is only $326. But that's only New York to London; it'll cost me another $300 to get from here to NY & back (I'll have to fly; I don't have the time to travel by any slower means). So the Blish flight would only save me about $90, after all. Still, $90 buys a lot of prozines.

-- BEING COMMENTS ON LAST WEEK'S DISTRIBUTION

Dick Lupoff -- Fandom is going to Hell again; let's all join the Cult! No; actually, I suppose you realize that our little microcosm isn't really fragmenting that dramatically, because Monster Fandom, Comics Fandom, etc. are being formed by outsiders, rather than by sf fans deserting us. While there is some overlapping -- I'm also in Burroughs, Comics Fandom, and Oz Fandom, myself -- I can't think of any sf fans who've completely abandoned our field for any of these others. Whoops, I take that back; I can, too. Bob Jennings and D. Bruce Berry, now solidly ensconced in Comics Fandom, and I wonder how many of us miss 'em? Hmm, and Nirenberg did disappear into Humor-&-Satire Fandom. Well, maybe you're more right than I thought you were at first, but I'm still not gonna stay awake nights worrying about it. ## I dunno; I'd guess that any comic worth money in 1965-66 would be worth even more money in 1979 -- especially if it's still in mint condition after 14 years. This is assuming that the field doesn't completely disintegrate, and I don't think it will. It may have lost a lot of its novelty value by then and may not be as large, but I seriously doubt it'll die out completely. And considering that comics only cost 12¢ each, it'd be hard to take much of a loss on 'em in any case. ## If Jock Root is still in New York, try to borrow his copy of Gorey's The Unstrung Harp; he has the only copy of it I've ever seen. My favorites are The Object-Lesson, The Doubtful Guest, The Willodale Handcar, and The Unstrung Harp; I haven't cared too much for anything Gorey's done lately. He just illustrated a weird anthology called Monsters Galore, I think it is, and the product is a complete bust; it's another of those books that could just as aptly be called The World's Most Often Reprinted Horror Stories, and the illustrations have nothing to recommend them whatever. Gorey has done pleasant dust jackets for two sf books -- The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom, by H. Nearing, and Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson. I hope he does more.

Gregg Wolford -- Okay, if you have a good reason for spelling your title BOROGROVE, by all means continue. But I'll bet you have to explain again every time we get another new member who doesn't know what the score is. ## If your TW3 reprints are liked by some Apa L members, then go right ahead with 'em. Don't worry about my refusing to act as your Apa L agent just because I personally don't like some of your material even though others do; I don't operate that way. As long as the whole club doesn't rise up against it, I won't consider myself entitled to throw it out. However, you realize what this means, don't you? More flag laws.

Redd Boggs -- No comment hooks here, but too good to just ignore. I liked it very much; more, please? I hope your last paragraph here doesn't mean that you're abandoning Apa L entirely?

Barry Gold -- Don Simpson's art arrived at the Art Show too late for any of the judging, but I agree that Dian's "Lament for Boromir" was -- in my opinion -- good enough to win the Tolkien Award even if there were no other contestants in the category. I don't know whether it's any of my business or not, but I am curious as to why the prize was unawarded with such a work as Dian's in the show; do my artistic tastes differ from those of the judges that much? ## The serial chapters shown at the Con came off much better than those shown here, because the Silverlake Playground has lousy acoustics, and you simply can't hear any motion picture soundtrack with any clarity. I wouldn't mind another set of them, but not at the Playground, please.

Milt Stevens -- I nice distinction on violence; you could distinguish 'em as 'fun violence' (Errol Flynn & the Westerns) and 'horror violence' ("Psycho" & the like). I don't think that either are intended to be amusing, though there are occasional slapstick routines in some fun violence sequences. Entertaining is the word I'd use, and I agree that horror violence will pall after a while.

Bruce Pelz -- You have some very good costume notes here. As a past judge (PacifiCon), I know that one of my main criteria of judging is 'how close does the costume come to the original?' Such things as wearing your glasses when they'd be out of place will lower a costume's validity in my book; you (and I, in the past) are interested enough in verisimilitude that you left off your glasses for the sake of the costume, even though it meant you couldn't see much of the Costume Ball yourself. I think this is a praiseworthy attitude, and it's certainly helped you win prizes that have been all the more deserved because of it.

Dave Hulan -- Did you send a copy of this index to Harold Piser for his records?

Tom Gilbert -- Welcome back. ## As I understand it, the Con Committee cancelled the Huckster Room after trying to find any hucksters who were interested in buying table space, and getting no response whatsoever. Then, after the Room had been cancelled, Ben Stark decided that he'd bring down his wares after all, and had to be told he should've spoken up earlier. This is the 'discouraging of the hucksters' that the ConCom did. ## The only reason the San Diego group was thought to have the '66 bid "sewed up" before the Business Meeting was that nobody knew before the Meeting that there was any choice in the matter; everyone thought San Diego was the only city bidding. So I don't think you can say that the "defection" was due solely to a lack of confidence in Diego's abilities -- though I agree that this was probably a strong factor on some peoples' voting. ## Neither Android Avenger nor any of the other Ace releases with it have appeared in Los Angeles yet; as I've said, we're at the tail end of the distribution chain.

Jayn Ellern -- Okay, I'll have to plead guilty in that I have criticized your abilities as a hypnotist without having ever seen you perform or doing any research into what your qualifications as a hypnotist may be. Maybe I should've said, "Gee, I didn't know Jayn was qualified to practice hypnosis.", and let it go at that. I do not consider hypnosis as a fit subject for party amusements, though, and I have a suspicion of those who use it as such. I'll also have to confess that I don't know what the specific qualifications for a professional hypnotist are, but as long as the matter has been brought up, how much experience have you had as a hypnotist? As to the "necessity to comment, all unasked" on the subject, I'm not aware that we've ever had to get permission to do Distribution Comments on anything brought up in Apa L. and as to your charge that I've "said three times that [I] wouldn't allow [you] to hypnotize [me] on a bet", I'd be extremely interested in having you cite those three times -- I can only remember discussing the subject twice before this -- and I'd like to know where I'm supposed to say that I "wouldn't allow" you to hypnotize me "on a bet", or that I wouldn't trust myself "in [your] hands"? If you're going to quote me, please do so accurately. I said in RR #35 that "I don't think I'd care to trust myself under hypnosis to any of them, though", referring to Harness, Hannifen, Stine, yourself, and that entire group; if you want to rewrite this so that it becomes a deliberate attack specifically against you, that's your business, but excuse me if I don't feel like playing the game.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I've just been to the philatelist's lately, looking at all the pretty postage stamps with the cute unicorns (France), the cute kittens (Rumania), and the cute dinosaurs (Poland) -- and if you don't think dinosaurs can be cute, you haven't seen these stamps. I also notice that there's a set of 8 stamps from Umm Al-Qiwain commemorating the Kennedy funeral, consisting of photographs taken at the funeral. There's one of the coffin, and another of the family in mourning, and several of all the dignitaries -- Ike, DeGaulle, Erhard, and the lot -- and so on. The Churchill commemoratives are beginning to appear in a flood; many of these are JFK issues with Kennedy's face overstamped "in memoriam Winston S. Churchill". And now I suppose the Adlai Stevenson stamps will be popping up from everywhere. Oh, it's fun being a stamp collector today; yes it is!

I have as yet been unable to locate Umm Al-Qiwain in any atlas, though I know it's on the Arabian Penninsula someplace. Did any of you have any better luck?