About Fred
Fred Patten is a long-time and respected member of SF and anime fandom: see his Fan Gallery bio, his Furry Writer's Guild bio, and also his biographical listing on Wikipedia. Now retired, he is still a moving force behind the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association (ALAA) which is responsible for the yearly Recommended Anthropomorphics List and the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Awards aka the Ursa Majors. See also his recent interview in Otaku In A Bottle, and the article,"The Original Anime Fanboy" on Crazed Fanboy.
Fred had a brain stem stroke on March 12, 2005, which left his right hand/arm and right leg paralyzed and impaired his sense of pain on that side. He did not have medical insurance. Now that he is past 70, he is on Medicare and Medical.
After spending a month at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital in Marina Del Rey and six weeks at Rancho Los Amigos in Downey before finally being transferred to Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital. He was at Golden State until May 2010, when he was transferred to the San Fernando Post Acute Hospital where he is today.
As of January 2012, Fred is still bedridden at the San Fernando Post Acute convalescent hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar. He gets walking therapy three times a week, and the nurses always say that he is steadily improving, but he has been steadily improving for years now and he is still unable to stand or walk without assistance.
Fred's sister Sherrill (Sherry) visits him almost every day. She got him a MacBook Pro laptop computer that he can use in bed, and he spends hours each day on the Internet and writing. He is currently writing Furry articles and book reviews for the online magazines Anthro and Flayrah, and he has just resumed writing for Animation World Magazine, which he wrote for from 2000 until he had his stroke. He is still active via e.mail in the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers Furry fandom's annual Ursa Major Awards.
Sherry takes him out in his wheelchair about once a week. He has a few favorite restaurants in the Sylmar - North Hollywood area. He generally finds it too stressful to go to movies in theaters, but he watches many at Sherry's apartment on her pay-per-view 42" TV. About once a month Sherry takes Fred to visit the University of California, Riverside Library, where he helps the librarians who are still cataloging the collection that he donated in 2005.
During 2011 he began contributing regularly to the online Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base (ISFDB), which is trying to compile a comprehensive data base of all printed science fiction, fantasy, and horror printed books and magazines, including book reviews. Fred has been able to add data on over a hundred s-f books and magazines that ISFDB lacked. The ISFDB entry on Fred himself is very lengthy, citing over 600 s-f reviews published between 1970 and 2010 in numerous s-f magazines
Fred and Sherry have recently attended two local conventions for one day each, Loscon 38 last November and Anime L.A. 2012 in January, and they plant to attend more in 2012, weather permitting.
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