Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, October 27, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Fifty-Fourth Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1472, October 28, 1965. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

From one anniversary to the next. Last week was Apa L's first anniversary; tonight's Meeting marks the 31st anniversary of the LASFS. This last year seems to me to have been more active than the preceding couple. The club's average attendance has grown appreciably from what it was during the time we were in transition from Mathom House to getting settled here at the Silverlake Playground. I think this growth can be attributed mostly to the increased club activities -- Apa L, a regular schedule o f programs once again, and such extra activities as theatre parties and picnics. As things look now, there's no likelihood of any of these slacking off in the near future, so I think we can safely state that LA Fandom is either on the rise or riding a crest. I'm enjoying it; how about you?

The above is a condensed version of what was going to be a long, bland, and ineLLably dull editorial on LASFS: The Year Past, The Year To Come. Instead, I think I'm going to fill up my usual three pages with some dist'n comments. It's been a long time now since I did a set of really good d.c.'s.

-- BEING COMMENTS ON LAST WEEK'S DISTRIBUTION

And it's not easy starting the d.c.'s without a general look at the monster. In fact, I'm not going to try. An anniversary comes only once a year, and as long as I've got the job of putting the anniversary dist'n together, you aren't going to catch me advocating they make 'em more often. We had every table in the place in service to hold the contributions; we had I don't know how many fans helping to collate the thing (for which many thanks), and we still didn't get finished until 10 minutes after the Playground was supposed to have been closed. (A special thanks to the Playground Director for waiting for us, even though he was obviously impatient to close up and go home.) The number of contributions was Just Right as far as our Table of Contents was concerned; any more zines would've had to've gone unlisted. The Dist'n had to go into two parts because of its thickness, even though we were using the ½ inch staples, the largest Swingline makes. (Of course that doubled the time it took to staple it together.) I think the result is worth it, but, Oh, Roscoe! am I glad I don't have to go through that every week!

Large as it was, there were some contributors noticeably missing; the Trimbles especially, not to mention Bill Blackbeard, Ellie Turner, Barbara May, Tom Gilbert, and others. On the other hand, considering we had 41 contributors, it's a good thing we didn't have any more claims on complete Dist'ns. Thanks, everybody, for turning in at least 45 copies of your zines. (I thought there were only 40 copies of OPO, though; did someone miss that in his copy?) Pity poor Tom Gilbert, who made a special point of showing up so as to get a copy as an Attendee; there just weren't enough to go around.

The photocovers came out wonderfully. The idea for a photocover for the anniversary Dist'n came up about a month ago, replacing one to get a multicollaborated piece of fan artwork. Fred Whitledge said he'd be able to get it printed at his school if we could get the photos and layout to him in time, and Ted Johnstone guaranteed that he'd take care of the photos. However, an unexpected job assignment cut into Ted's time so that he wasn't able to start work on it as soon as we'd planned. Fred's estimated deadline came and passed, Ted finished his job, and the photocover was hastily thrown together between the 7th and 9th of this month: Ted gathered all the photo negatives he could find, and took shots at the Meeting three weeks ago of the LASFS and Apa L in action, and of all the active contributors present whose pictures we didn't already have. The next two evenings were spent in developing pictures, picking out the usable shots (at which point we discovered we were missing pics of some people after all, but it was too late to do anything about it), and arranging everything into the format we wanted. I then drove the whole project over to Alta Loma and delivered it to Fred Whitledge, who said he'd turn it over to his school art department and he was pretty sure there was still time to get it all printed up by the anniversary issue. So I went home to type up the Key to the Photocovers according to the notes I'd taken on the layout, and hope it'd get finished in time -- I didn't know until Fred walked into the Meeting last week whether it'd gotten done or not; the Goldstone cover on Part 2 of the Dist'n was originally brought as a standby just in case Fred failed to make it. Well, as you know, everything turned out fine after all. That school art dep't did a great job of lettering on the front cover, and the photos came through with all the fidelity of the originals. (If some of them are blurry, that's probably because the original was originally fuzzy, blown up out of a group shot because we just couldn't find any better -- Betty Knight's and Durk Pearson's on the back cover are blowups from Group 3 on the front cover, for example.) I was slightly disappointed that the three Group shots had to be reduced so much that it's almost impossible to recognize any of the people in it; if I'd known everything was going to be that small, I'd've settled for one Group shot not reduced so much. Of the individual shots, I think most of them came out very well, though I do wish we could've gotten sharper shots of some people (Mike Klassen & Owen Hannifen in particular; still, you should've seen what we discarded). I don't care for the one of Luise Petti; it's a great shot of her, but it's a posed portrait photo, not the informal Luise we see at the Meetings. Due to lack of time, we were unable to get any photos of out-of-town contributors, except for the one of Phil Salin that Ted had taken while Phil was in town. I'm as sorry about this as anybody else, but who Deserved to be on the covers had to take second place to those whose Pictures We Had; nobody was deliberately slighted. On checking over the photocovers, I notice that there were two mistakes on my Key; the two photos of the Pelzes are transposed, and in Group 2, the last-named person is Bill Glass, not Bill Ellern. Aside from that, I'm happy with the whole thing.

What I'd like to do now is to have another photocover made up featuring all of our out-of-town contributors; those who didn't make it onto this anniversary cover. Could all of you find photos or negatives of yourselves that you like and send them to me in the next month or so? If so, I'll try to schedule another photocover around Dist'n #60; an Out-of-Towner Special. Can do, Felice? Dave? Ted? Gregg? Rich? Lon?

Dave Hulan -- Since Bĵo is out of town this week and won't have a zine in, I guess I might as well answer everybody's questions about her cover on Dist'n 52. It was printed in white ink on a fairly fuzzy blue paper (probably Tru-Ray, as opposed to the slicker & smoother Gestetner I usually use). It was drawn by brush-stencil rather than the usual stylus method. With a brush-stencil, instead of the usual fine-line stylus, you use a brush dipped in a special acid, drawing on a special kind of stencil; this eats away a much broader line than you can get with any stylus, resulting in larger areas of color on your finished page. The illustration was originally drawn back around 1961 or '62 and used as the cover on FANTASY AMATEUR #98; the copies I used here were part of an overrun that had been sitting around gathering dust for three or four years, as some of you may have been able to tell by the faded coloring on the right-hand portion of your copies. We'll have to set the mimeo up for white ink again one of these days, and run off another supply of illustrations on black and dark magenta paper. ## What with all the programs being arranged for the next couple of months, maybe you'll find the LASFS Meetings worth attending after all during this time. If not, you can always contribute by mail as our regular out-of-towners do; I'll be glad to act as your agent. Just include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with each contribution when you send it to me; you can consider your postage both ways as your "reasonable dues". This does mean you'll have to contribute to every Dist'n you want to get for sure, but if you're willing to contribute to at least every other one anyway, you should be assured of getting most of 'em. As mail between Tarzana and West L.A. is presumably Fast, you shouldn't have too much trouble about falling behind. Or maybe you can drop off NIDDHOGGR and pick up your Dist'n with Al Lewis; I understand you're now living only a couple of blocks from the school where he teaches?

Gil-Lamont -- But the Collector can't stop with mere pseudonyms, you know. The next step -- or maybe even the preceding step -- is the Complete Name. So many authors use initials; you must know what each and every one of them stands for, or Go Mad. John Wood Campbell. Philip Kendrick Dick. Alice Mary Norton. Raymond Douglas Bradbury. If we knew what the H. stood for in H. Beam Piper, we might know if he was really Horace B. Fyfe. Most people know C.M. Kornbluth's first name was Cyril; how many know what the M. stood for? (Heh, heh.) And then there's Dates...

Andy Porter -- The Florida pavilion for sale for only $1? Hey, gang, that's how we can get our LASFS Clubhouse! We just wait until the next World's Fair is held out here (what happened to Garden Grove's bid for '68, anyhow?), and then, when they're tearing it down, we buy one of the fancy pavilions for a nominal fee. As for moving it; w ell, heck, everybody knows that fans are the best movers in the world. Right, Al? JT? ## "The Bradbury plays ... will appeal most to a cultured, hip audience familiar with Pop art and comic books." Hmmm.

Dick Lupoff -- Yarst on you, Sirrah! How can you pretend to list the works of the Wizard without once mentioning "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall"!? (Oop -- I see it's one of the ones you haven't read yet -- sorry.) Well, definitely get it if you can; the title is the lead story in a collection of short fantasies, at least half of which would not have been out of place in UNKNOWN WORLDS, despite their quaint writing. One of the stories in the book -- not "The Water Ghost" itself; I forget the title -- deals with an American millionaire who buys an old English mansion only to find that it's haunted by the ghost of an old charwoman who was summarily turned out without pay a couple of centuries ago, and who's not going to quit haunting until she gets her back wages -- plus compound interest for the 300 years she's been waiting; the total comes to more than even the millionaire can afford. The manner in which he solves the problem to everybody's satisfaction is a true example of Yankee Ingenuity. I read most of the Wizard's works when I was at UCLA several years ago; they've got a good set of 'em. ## If you like Bangs, though, have you read any of the works of F. Anstey (Thomas Anstey Guthrie)? He turned out several top-notch fantasies between the 1880's and the 1920's, including Vice Versa, The Brass Bottle (which got a favorable plug in E. Nesbit's The Five Children and It and was recently modernized into a movie with Tony Randall and Burl Ives), and In Brief Authority, which I consider his three best novels. I'd like to see your opinion of Anstey's works. ## You can take this as a vote against Len Bailes' stand; I like your reviews of old & obscure books. Maybe Don Wollheim can pick up some handy hints for his Ace Science Fiction Classics.

Lon Atkins -- Yes, I started out in favor of Letting Baltimore Have A Turn, but the more Chalker talks, the more I'm swinging around to New York. ## Better you shouldn't ask about Manny Weltman. He's the only person I've ever met that everybody automatically dislikes before even getting to know him well (few people will stay around that long). He's the wheeler-dealer type who's always got a Big Thing going and will let you in on the ground floor; I've caught him in at least one flagrant untruth. ## Unfortunately, a deck of playing cards with our own made-to-order suits would be prohibitively expensive; we'll have to stick to merely stfnal or fannish backs. We will be glad to put you down for a couple of decks, though. The reason we're considering them (Ted White) is that we want to do something fancy for Our Con; Durk Pearson suggested postage stamps like the Mars and Luna sheets of several Worldcons back, but most of us prefer the playing cards, which do have a utilitarian purpose besides being faanish. And it was the Detention, not NyCon II, that had the Emsh decks.