What's New?
See also Fred's APA-L Zines for older info.
June 30, 2012
Fred is the editor of two new s-f anthologies that will be
published during June, Already Among Us and The Ursa Major Awards
Anthology. There will be a book signing for them at the LASFS clubhouse, in Van Nuys on Saturday, June 30 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. The former book is available as a $18.95
hardcover or a $9.99 trade paperback; the latter is a $19.95 trade paperback. Since this is a book signing by
the editor and not a bookstore, there will be no provision for credit-card sales; the books will be cash only.
April 2012
Fred visits the Gag Me With A Toon 4 art gallery exhibition at the WWA Gallery in Culver City, and later goes to the AMC Theatre 16 in Burbank to see The Pirates! Band of Misfits.
Fred (with Sherry's help) resumes going to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, at its new clubhouse, for the first time since the previous May.
March 2012
Fred attends the WonderCon 2012 comic-book convention at the Anaheim Convention Center.
February 2012
Fred visits the Animal Kingdom art gallery exhibition of Josh Agle's paintings at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City.
Fred begins reviewing books on animation for the Animation World Network website.
January 2012
The MiDFur XIII convention, in Melbourne, Australia, inducted him into its Furry Hall of Fame.
December 2011
Fred is accepted as a member of the Furry Writers' Guild.
October 2011
Fred begins contributing to the Internet Science Fiction Data Base ISFDB, adding information and new entries to the online data base of s-f authors and their books.
July, 2011
Fred received an illuminated certificate from the County of Los Angeles recognizing him for his expertise in the field of Japanese anime and manga. He has had it framed and added to his art collection.
Text as follows:
County of Los Angeles
(IMAGE)
California
“Enriching Lives”
County of Los Angeles
| (Bookcover Image) Watching Anime, Reading Manga |
Fred Patten |
IN RECOGNITION OF LIFETIME OF CONTRIBUTIONS AS A PIONEER FOR ANIME IN THE UNITED STATES AND AS A MEDIA AND SCIENCE FICTION HISTORIAN WHO HAS DELIGHTED AUDIENCES AND MENTORED MANY AND ENHANCED LOS ANGELES COUNTY’S RENOWN AND ECONOMY AS AN ENTERTAINMENT CAPITAL, I, MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH, ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES AND ITS TEN MILLION RESIDENTS, HEREBY HIGHLY COMMEND FRED PATTEN AND EXTEND DEEP APPRECIATION TO HIM FOR SHARING HIS PASSION AND TALENTS WITH ALL OF US.
JUNE 2011
| (Gold Seal) COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA |
(signature)___________________ MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH Mayor, County of Los Angeles |
June 2011
Fred resumes reviewing books for the Anthro and Flayrah websites.
January 23, 2011
Fred was added to the Shel Dorf Fan Club on Sunday, January 23. Here are some pictures:
 Fred's Membership Card |
 and Membership Certificate |
Fred and Membership Card
Greg Koudoulian, Svea Macek, Fred, George Clayton Johnson, William Clausen, and Richard Kyle.
Greg started the Shel Dorf fan club last year in Shel's memory after Shel died. Shel was the main founder of the San Diego Comic-Con in 1969 and he ran it for its first two decades.
August 5, 2010
Fred has moved to San Fernando Post Acute Hospital, 12260 Foothill Blvd., Sylmar, CA 91342. For best results contact him either via email or his sister.
August 4, 2010
Fred is changing hospitals, after a nasty bout with bedsores. Right now he can be contacted via his sister. More info here when I have it.
May 22, 2010
Fred was recently hospitalized for infected bedsores. He is currently recovering in the Post Acute section, and it is not yet known when he'll be back to Golden State. If you need to contact him, email is probably best. Do not expect a quick reply.
May 7, 2010
Fred at the Los Angeles Zoo with Tom Locke and Sherry Patten.
November 28, 2009
Photo by Gina Palmer
Fred recently received the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the field of science fiction. Here he is at the annual convention (LOSCON) of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society
August 11, 2009
A recent note from Fred's sister, Sherry Patten
Once a month, Jan. - June, Fred visited Dr. Melissa Conway and the librarians at The Eaton Collection @ UC Riverside where he was video interviewed several times about "fandom", and provided information about some of his non-book donations to The Fred Patten Collection.
Feb. 10th Fred saw "Coraline" at a movie theatre in Burbank.
He was "Fan Guest of Honor" at BAYCON (Memorial Day weekend in Oakland); as he was unable to attend the convention, Stephen Nelson (husband of Baycon committee chairperson, Christine Doyle) video interviewed Fred for over an hour in his study at my apt. (Tadao Tomomatsu was "on camera", asking Fred questions about his interest in fandom) on May 16th. The video interview was played at Baycon on Sunday, May 24th.
June 30th, Fred had lunch with longtime Japanese anime enthusiast Bill Winckler at a Japanese restaurant in Woodland Hills.
In recent months he's watched a few old movies at my apt., and a few recent ones ("Enchanted", "Nim's Island").
Tho he doesn't have too much interest in reading books now, Fred has read the latest mysteries by authors he enjoys, and a few Harry Turtledove books.
In early July Fred spent a few days having tests at Mission Community Hospital; while his doctors discuss possible "procedures" to improve Fred's general health, he's currently "limited" to attending LASFS meetings every other Thursday.
Regards, Sherry
July 4, 2008
Fred tells me that due to declining health (hopefully temporary), he has resigned from the writing projects in mid-2008 that he had been continuing after his stroke in 2005.
March 24, 2007
I have been keeping busy reviewing books, mostly Furry fiction for the bimonthly Anthro magazine. Issue #10 was posted at the beginning of March, and #11 will go up at the beginning of May.
March has also kept me busy as the Secretary for the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association (ALAA), the society that administers the annual Ursa Major Awards. We have been trying to establish "diplomatic relations", so to speak, with the larger and longer-running Furry conventions to get them to promote the Awards among their memberships. So far eight conventions have agreed to do so, and have each appointed a representative to join the ALAA's Directors: Anthrocon in Pittsburgh in July, CaliFur in Southern California in May, Eurofurence in Germany in September, FurFright in Connecticut in October, Furry Weekend Atlanta in February, Midwest Furfest in Chicago in November, Morphicon in Columbus in May, and Rocket City FurMeet in Huntsville in May. We tallied all the nominations for the 2006 Ursa Major Awards in early March, and opened voting for the Awards, which will go from mid-March through mid-April. Then we have to tally the votes, determine the winners, and prepare the trophies in ten categories in time for the presentations at CaliFur 3, in Costa Mesa on 4-6 May.
In late March I got a request from Gina Ruiz to review manga for The Flipbook*, a new Internet review magazine of books of all forms of fantasy. She has contacts with several major publishers, and offered to ask them for any books I want to review. I replied that I am already reviewing manga for the Comics Buyer’s Guide, but I would like to review books about American and international animation, and regular s-f novels instead. So she has just requested about $150 worth of new books from various American and British publishers for me, including several that I have been waiting for from the Los Angeles Public Library for weeks like Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neil Gabler (Knopf, $35.00) and Halas and Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History, by Vivien Halas & Paul Wells (Southbank Publishing, £19.99).
*now defunct, contents moved to The Graphic Landscape. See the 2007 archives.
Apparently The Flipbook is a more prestigious book review site than I had realized. Since my first reviews were posted, FedEx has been delivering boxes of books for review to me almost every day. On Friday, 23 March, I wrote and sent in a review of Lawrence Watt-Evans’ fantasy novel The Spriggan Mirror in the morning; The Flipbook posted it around noon; and by the end of the day it had been picked up and reprinted on the Reuters International News Service site. Of course, I don’t get paid, but the honor of being headlined (“Fred Patten Reviews The Spriggan Mirror”) on Reuters News should be good for a few more review books.
November 30, 2006
Click here for Fred's Loscon 33 report. As always, thanks to all who helped him attend the convention.
September 10, 2006
Click here for Fred's LACon IV report. Thanks again, to all who helped him attend.
September 2, 2006
On Thursday, August 24, Fred was given the Life Achievement Award at LACon IV. Text as follows:
Fred Patten
in celebration of a lifetime service
to Fandom
with thanks from
the committee & members
2006
L.A.CON IV . THE 64TH WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION
March 13, 2006
Fred has been moved to another, somewhat larger room. How long this will last is anybody's guess. He now has a biographical listing in Wikipedia. FURRY!: THE BEST ANTHROPOMORPHIC STORIES EVER, the mass-market edition of BEST IN SHOW has been released by iBooks as of February 9, and may be found in bookstores.
December 30, 2005
Fred is back in his room and at his computer after some time being treated at another hospital and recovering in isolation, during which time he was away from his email.
November 10, 2005
From ¡Rabaños Radiactivos! (Fred's weekly zine which appears in APA-L)
Last week, the Internet Furry magazine Anthro #2, November-December 2005, was published with the beginning of a regular book review column by me, "Seen While Prowling". This is my first published work besides ¡RR! since my stroke.
Actually, while this is the first publication of these reviews, only the first (the combined review of Ralph Hayes' Nip and Tuck and Tales of the Questor collections) is newly-written. The other two reviews were written over two years ago for the never-published Yarf! #70. I wrote almost a dozen book reviews for Yarf! and Claw & Quill which were unused when those two Furry magazines "went on hiatus" without warning. Anthro has accepted them, to be intermixed with new reviews so all my reviews there will not be of one- and two-year-old books.
I hate for my writing to go unused to so am very happy to see my reviews of The Tale of the Swamp Rat and Lionboy published at long last. The books are still in print, so the reviews are still pertinent. I prefer print magazines to Internet magazines, but the latter have the advantage of being able to show the covers of the books I review in full color.
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