Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, January 19, 1966. Intended for Apa L, Sixty-Sixth Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1484, January 20, 1966. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

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Jim Schumacher -- Your logo heading and illustration turned out to be all right. It's always nice to get another fan with artistic talent into the club; maybe we can get a cover for Apa L from you someday? ## I'm not aware that "tyro" is a particularly little-known word; I've known it for as long as I can remember. It might be an apt title for your fanzine now, but in a year or so, it's gonna be out of date. For a good stfnal title, you can always pick up a book or magazine and look for a place or personal name. Of course, I dunno; maybe you're the type who doesn't mind changing the title of his zine every five or ten issues, as the mood takes him. Me, I like picking out one title and sticking to it. why would "banjo" make a particularly good title? ## The Best of Fandom, 1965 sounds like a rather good idea, but in a way I hope it doesn't include too much from Apa L. Because of The Best from Apa L. We're already competing with ALGOL on this, and if, when the second collection of Best comes out in July, a lot of the material is already familiar to everybody through ALGOL &/or Best of Fandom, it won't make nearly as much of a hit. Of course, if you're not planning on getting started for another six months, we don't have much to worry about. In fact (a written mental note), it might be an idea to see about having The Best From Apa L: 1966 multilithed; I'll have to talk to Fred Whitledge about it. ## No, I could never sit down at the typer and compose comments as though I was talking with someone, because I'm reasonably tongue-tied in personal contact. ## Don Franson, for one, says the WorldCons aren't WorldCons. Other names escape me at the moment, but I know I've seen the theory expressed in print more recently than Don's last fanzine. ## Well, I was apparently misinformed about "Winnie-the-Pooh" being a back-up filler with "That Darn Cat", because all the ads have "TDC" playing with "Flash, the Teenage Otter". If "WtP" is playing regularly with "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines", I'll make a point of seeing that double-bill right away!

The above subject reminds me to remind you that copies of The Best from Apa L: 1965 are still available for $1.00, or $1.25 if mailed out. We've got various new regular contributors now who may not have been interested in it before, but who'll want it now.

Dwain Kaiser -- Let's not get in competition here, boy. Anything not originally published in Apa L, I'd be glad to see in your anthology. A Best of Fandom would be great for the WesterCon, but it'll take enough away from the Apa L volume as it is (since not too many fen are going to buy more than one fanzine costing over $1.00 each, and a collection from Fandom in general will outdraw a collection limited to one source). If you've got the cream of Apa L in it as well, you'll really scuttle our annual volume. We'll have to get together on this and work something out. ## And don't forget to do your contrib for "AI".

Andy Porter -- How would you like to do an abstract art ditto cover for Apa L?

Tom Dupree -- Okay, I'll hold up on your stuff so that you'll have about a month's backlog here, in case the PO should occasionally be slow. This, by the way, is a problem I sometimes have with zines from out-of-town contributors. If one of their issues arrives on a Friday, missing the Dist'n by a day, and then another arrives on schedule the next Wednesday or Thursday, should I put them both in the next Apa L, or hold one over for another week? I understand that Ted White was grotched when I put two issues of L into one Dist'n, though he never told me he wasn't planning on publishing anything the following week. Material from our out-of-town contributors is often a week or more dated than the rest of Apa L anyway, and I should think it'd be desirable to get the zines into the Dist'n (especially when they have comments), rather than deliberately holding them up a week or more and making them still more dated. With some fans, such as yourself, who send instructions, I know I'm supposed to maintain a backlog. With others, such as Gregg Wolford, whose zines are obviously meant to be used as soon as they arrive, I can use them up all at once if two should arrive in one week, through the vagaries of the mail delivery. With some, such as White, Van Arnam, or Porter, I have no instructions. And unless I get instructions, I play it by ear. ## One of the things that makes THE GOON GOES WEST so interesting is that the German edition (serialized in SOL, I believe) is illustrated by Eddie Jones; the pictures are as good as ATom's, but of different scenes. It's interesting to compare the two editions.

June Konigsberg -- Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah, I Go Pogo, p. 49. If you want the date of the daily strip, I'm afraid I can't help you. ## Yes, that's the long "o" in your name in Cyrillic. ## My nominee for the worst Oz book I've read so far would be Jack Snow's Magical Mimics. If you mean which I think is Baum's worst, I'm not sure. I think I was most disappointed in The Magic of Oz, because Baum didn't milk his gimmick for nearly as much as he should've gotten out it. ## The comic section in BOYS' LIFE can be taken or left alone, but I would appreciate knowing when there's any regular science-fiction, especially when by such regular authors as Blish, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Keith's time-travel stories (Mutiny in the Time Machine, et. Seq.) are okay, though on a more juvenile level -- about on a par with Tom Swift, I'd say, literarily speaking. Still, such are worth noting, if only for the archives. ## Take a look at the cover of the current (Feb.) CHILDRENS' DIGEST, and tell me whether it's by Kelly Freas or not. I can't make up my mind, but I think so.

Tom Digby -- Colored light bulbs make nice presents to octopi, according to some underwater scientist, who reported that they'd sneak out of the rocks to grab his used flashbulbs. ## I've gotten in the habit of flicking my car's door handle with my fingernail before opening the door, to dampen any electric shock; it's not quite so bad through the fingernail. ## Gad, I'd like to see that illustrated heraldically -- a purple antelope on a field of tuna fish.

Fred Hollander -- Yeah, "Shaw" in Cyrillic comes out sounding more like "Shoe". But I know that one's right, because I copied the spelling off a Soviet postage stamp honoring George Bernard Shaw. ## I'll be glad to list who brings zines to the Dist'ns if anybody'll tell me, but when I find a zine sitting on the collating table when I get there, and everybody just looks innocent when I ask who brought it, there's not much I can do. I still don't know who brought the Coventranian page, though I suspect Harness of being responsible for it.

Bruce Pelz -- See my comments directly above. Strangely enough, most of your corrections on my Cyrillic are on the parts I know are right in the first place; since I found Russian sources for Shaw and Jack (London). And I based the "H" for Harness, etc., on the "H" sound in Earnest Hemingway. You may be right about "May". As a matter of fact, the name I was most unsure of was my own; I didn't know whether "Patten" would keep both t's or not. ## So Alderson was responsible for the Coventranian sheet, huh? Fair enough. ## It's interesting comparing the club's active membership list with a list of Apa L's regular contributors.

Mike Klassen -- It's funny you should have brought up the subject of Library exhibits so recently, because just last Friday, I was called into the head office at the USC Library where I work, and was asked, because of my interest in science-fiction, if I would care to take charge of arranging an exhibit on Jules Verne for the library's display cases. The reason for the exhibit was the loan from the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in New York of a set of 16 large laminated plastic sheets titled "Jules Verne; prophète de notre temps", consisting of reproductions of photographs and pictures illustrating Verne's life and his works; the Library wanted to get the use of this material before it had to be returned. The main part of arranging the exhibit would consist of translating the captions on the plastic sheets into English; in addition, if I knew of anything else that would lend color and interest to the exhibit, the Library would be glad to get it. I accepted the project with enthusiasm, because I enjoy working with science-fiction, it was a welcome break from my usual routine, and I looked forward to setting up a Library display the way I thought it should be run; the exhibits that have been on display since I came to USC are sickly compared to the ones I became accustomed to at UCLA. That evening, I stopped at a stamp store and bought the 1955 set of Jules Verne postage stamps from Monaco, illustrating scenes from his various books. On Sunday, I went over to Forry Ackerman's, and got his help on the project; he loaned me a large number of stills from movies based on Verne's works, odd old editions of Verne's novels, and assorted rare magazines (Including the first issue of AMAZING) that could be used prominently in the exhibit. Then I started translating the captions, which did turn out to be the most time-consuming part of the project (in fact, my immediate supervisor complained to the administration that he never would have allowed me to take on the project if he'd known it was going to occupy so much of my time), since my knowledge of French is only passable at best; I quickly read a biography of Verne to familiarize myself with the basic information contained in the French commentary, since once you know what the subject matter is about, it's much easier to translate the individual words and come out with the right answer than it is when you don't have the slightest idea what's under discussion. I finished the translation on Wednesday, and with the stamps and Forry's material, plus whatever other Verniana I could find in the USC Library, I assembled the exhibit and turned it in to the head office. It was accepted, and went into the showcases today, where it should remain for about a month. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and see it. ## Several of the librarians say the exhibit has already attracted more attention this afternoon than any other exhibit they can remember for a long time. I think this is largely because the exhibit says something. Besides the captions on the plastic sheets, I tried to write out a note for each group of books or stills or whatever to give some reason for these particular items to be on display. To quote one card, between two old books: "Many of Verne's works were originally written as short novels for magazine serialization, to be followed immediately by sequels, as they proved popular. Most of these would be subsequently published together in hard covers as one novel. In these two examples of British juvenile literary Series, the original divisions have been maintained, presumably to add extra volumes to the Series, since Verne has always been a popular seller. Above is a gaudy edition of The Ice Desert, actually the second part of Captain Hatteras. Below is The Secret of the Island, the third and concluding part of The Mysterious Island." That note might not tell anybody anything they particularly want to know, but it at least tells them that those specific two books were chosen for display, and that we didn't just grab the two Verne books that were closest to hand and toss 'em in the glass case. The exhibit they just took down was on Sibelius, and consisted of photos and sketches of Sibelius, books about him, some of his musical scores, Finnish travel posters advertising "the land of Sibelius", and the like; it was all neatly geometrically arranged in the cases, but there wasn't a word of text to go along with it, to tell why it was there or to tie it all together -- it was just a bunch of stuff on one subject. As a result, almost nobody stopped to really look at it; people just glanced at it briefly and then went by. But they're stopping at the Verne exhibit to really look into the cases, and then they're moving on to the next case and studying that. Because there's something for them to read in the case, and to tell why each individual item on display is worth looking at. Um, well, I guess this is something I should be complaining about to the USC Library administration, and not yelling at you. But if you ever help get together a display -- say, on Ray Bradbury, for UCLA -- you might keep this in mind.