Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, April 9, 1966. Intended for Apa L, Seventy-Seventh Distribution, LASFS Meeting no. 1495, April 10, 1966. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

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

April seems to be the month for adding fans to the LA scene, even if only temporarily. Last week, Jerry Jacks, late of Baltimore Fandom, arrived out here for an indefinite stay -- he's looking for a job this week -- and he should become a familiar member of the club in short order. This Wednesday and Thursday, Marvyn Barrett will be in town briefly, on his way to Spain, and I'll be looking forward to meeting him at the Meeting tonight. May he pass through Los Angeles more often in the future! And, in another week or so, George Locke is due to arrive in Scottsdale from England, for a job that should leave him with most of his weekdays free, and hopefully lots of opportunities to come into Los Angeles. There should be several fan outings in the offing, then -- a couple of introductory trips to Disneyland, tours of Knott's Berry Farm, the Griffith Park Planetarium, and the like. Between now and WesterCon time, LA Fandom may get itself all toured out, in fact; we'll have to see. But it's always nice to welcome new fans to the Los Angeles community, whether permanently or for only a temporary stay.

Well, my book business as announced in last week's RR began well. I sold 24 of the 38 British children's Puffin Books that I opened up with -- C.S. Lewis' Narnian Chronicles were especially popular. I expect that I could've sold more, too, if I hadn't been occupied with Apa L and had had more time to walk around and shove my wares under people's noses; a couple of my sales were to people who were wandering through the Collating Room and stopped to look at my books just because they were there. Anyhow, I'm down to only two or three copies of most of my stock, so if you're planning to buy them, you'd better do so now. This shipment should pretty well saturate the LA fan market for these titles, so I probably won't be reordering them -- in bulk like this, anyway; I can always put in a special order for you if you miss something.

I didn't get many orders from anybody; I don't think many people got to see the two catalogs I was passing around. I'll have them again tonight, and if you want to see 'em, just ask me. One thing I may do is take specific requests and ask the club generally how many people want this title, to get more bulk orders of one title. So far, it looks as though my next shipment may consist mostly of E. Nesbit's 5 Children and It trilogy at 65¢ each (though The Phoenix and the Carpet seems to be out of print in the Puffin paperback edition); James Thurber's The 13 Clocks and The Wonderful O, in one edition illustrated by Ronald Searle, at 70¢; John Masefield's The Box of Delights, or, When the Wolves Were Running, at 75¢; and various of the Tintin hardcover French comic books (in French, or English translations), at $1.50 to $1.60 each. Anything you want?

-- BEING COMMENTS ON LAST WEEK'S DISTRIBUTION

Jerry Ljung -- You aren't supposed to send your Apa L zine to anybody in particular. You're advised to make your own personal arrangements with some fan in the LA area that's willing to agent for you, and whom you feel you can trust to take your zine in for the Dist'n, and to mail your copy of the Dist'n back to you. The details of the arrangement -- finances, etc. -- are between you and him. Personally, I don't act as agent for anybody who doesn't include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for his copy of the Dist'n with his zine. I've been giving your copies of the Dist'ns to Dwain Kaiser, who says he's acting as your Agent; what happens to them after I give 'em to Dwain at the LASFS Meeting is between you and him, as long as I have no instructions from you to the contrary. While you've sent me several of your zines (without stamped, self-addressed return envelopes), and I've brought them to LASFS for the Dist'n, we have no agenting agreement between us, and I'm not about to take on the expense of mailing you a Dist'n weekly out of my own pocket. While I can appreciate the eagerness of a fan who runs off an Apa L zine without waiting to find out the number of copies required, and sends it off to a LA fan without another word of warning, I do suggest you take the time to get a few of the operational rules of the organization down first, before, for someone who's flying blind, you haven't done anything actually wrong yet -- if you haven't gotten any Dist'ns yet, it may be because Dwain (who apparently hasn't gotten any instructions or postage money from you either, from what I gather) is sending them at the cheapest postal rates, which would take them a couple of weeks to reach Minnesota; the fact that a zine you date for the 72nd or 73rd Dist'n didn't reach here until the 76th, shows that there are delays somewhere along the line. Once you get all the rules down straight, we'll be glad to welcome you as a full-fledged active contributor.

June Konigsberg -- Little Orphan Annie began, way back in 1920-whenever, with Annie soliloquizing to Sandy in a rich mansion, remarking that things looked rosy enough, but they weren't really. The mansion belonged to the Warbucks, a sort of humorless Jiggs-and-Maggie type, who had risen from rags to riches through the First World War munitions industry; as with Jiggs and Maggie, Daddy was content to be just himself despite their new wealth, but Mommy was determined to buy her way into the highest Society. She was making sure she kept top billing on the society page by hosting lavish swank parties, and by organizing ladies' aid groups to go about the city doing good deeds; which was how she met Annie, adopting her from an orphanage as part of a publicity stunt during Mrs. Warbucks' Aid To The Orphans drive. But Annie knows how she really feels about her; she's just waiting for the publicity around the Orphans drive to fade away, and then she's going to ship "that brat" right back to the Orphans' Home. Before this can happen, however, Daddy arrives home, takes a liking to Annie, and decides that they're going to keep her, after all. Mommy is furious, but there's nothing she can do about it publicly. Soon after this, a titled European fortune-hunter arrives in town and attaches himself to Mommy, persuading her that Daddy is just an uncultured boor, unworthy of her or his fortune; and, if anything happened to him, leaving Mommy free to marry the Count, she'd become a noblewoman and automatically the head of Society. My knowledge of the early strip breaks off here and doesn't pick up again until the early '30's, by which time Mommy Warbucks had apparently disappeared forever.

Hank Stine -- Welcome back. Boy, we've really got faan fiction pouring out of our ears right now. What's surprisingly nice about it is that it's almost all of unusually high quality. Your story is a welcome addition to the ranks, although your World of If is certainly a bit farther out in some respects (and less so in others) than usual. Stick around until you finish this -- or are you going into competition with Bruce for a faanish Peyton Place?

Len Bailes -- Your narrative isn't by any means too involved; don't try to wiggle out of continuing "Man from H.A.S.I." that way. Just keep it coming!

Johnny Chambers -- You keep on contributing, too. You can get more expression into your little dinosaur with just a few lines than most fan or pro cartoonists I know of -- I think it's mostly the way you draw the eyes that does it. Why, I even overheard Dwain Kaiser grumbling over your zine last week, that he was going to have to get Pederson some ditto shading plates so he could do something like this too. Higher praise than that you can't get!

Bruce Pelz -- Yer nuts! It's THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN for Best Magazine, Never Step On A Scorpion for Best Novel, Steve Ditko for Best Artist, ...

Tom Digby -- "The Sky Was Full of GOODYEAR Blimps"? I recommend Chapter 7 of the Me First Party's political handbook as the best guide on the Right Way to go about watching for UFO's. ("Don't climb on a Garbage Can to get a closer view of the sky. I normally wouldn't mention this minor point except for the fact that I recently learned through personal experience that when you fall off a Garbage Can and are lying in the alley with a sprained ankle all covered with grapefruit rinds and coffee grounds, other Members are reluctant to help you home. ...") ## I'd say that the proper name for pop-type fansongs would be papsongs.

Ted White -- Heck, I'm sorry to see you go, though since from the manner of your leave-taking you've obviously put a lot of thought into the decision, I can't argue with your personal reasons. For this last year, you've consistently provided one of the most readable (both in terms of content and legibility) zines in the Dist'n; I considered myself fortunate to be able to read it a day or two before everybody else, as your agent. I may not always have been able to find comment hooks in your zine each week, but I can't remember ever not enjoying it. I can only hope that you'll change your mind and come back to Apa L sometime -- if not regularly, then from time to time -- and as long as you need an Agent, I'm available. See you in July.

Bill Glass -- Another good story. Do I detect a familiarity with Tony Boucher's and Poul Anderson's mystery series?

Mike Klassen -- Send a copy of this to Harlan Ellison. He'll write it up into a script for Joe Levine, and you'll both make a million dollars.

Al Lewis -- Welcome back. ## I'll have to read the book version of Dune before making up my mind for Best Novel, but so far I still think I enjoyed Year of the Unicorn the most. Short Fiction: Ed Clinton's "A Way With Kids" (MOH, Jan.) was a very nice bit of extrapolation on the suspended animation theme, but Phil Farmer's "Day of the Great Shout" (WOT, Jan.) is the most impressive I can think of. Of course, this presents the old problem inherent with good short stories: do you vote for one for Best Short Fiction, or wait until they're all collected into a novel (as I gather the River epic was originally) and vote for it for Best Novel? Artist: Jack Gaughan. Prozine: IF. Fanzine: I agree on ZENITH. Series: I haven't yet made up my mind. You could justify giving Tolkien the award for the Middle Earth series -- The Lord of the Rings AND The Hobbit, throwing in Tom Bombadil to meet the minimum quota of three items to justify the Series rating. But I agree with you that a Fantasy World is not necessarily a series, and Tolkien did get the IFA for TlotR when it first appeared. I haven't yet made up my mind as to what I'll vote for; right now, I like the Narnian Chronicles better than any standard s-f series I can think of, though I'd be wasting my vote putting it there. I guess Asimov's Foundation series (counting The Stars Like Dust, The Currents of Space, and other pre-Foundation stories set against the Trantorian background) is my favorite hardcore s-f series. I think the WorldCon Committee may have some trouble after all in defining just what any given series is; most authors have borderline novels that some would consider as parts of the series, and others wouldn't. Do you count Orphans of the Sky as part of the Future History series? Heinlein intended the two stories as the basis of the fourth volume, but just stuck 'em together without the intended rewrite after the Shasta-sponsored series fell apart -- so some say yes; others say no.