A Brief History of the LASFS

by Fred Patten, April, 2008

The Start of Organized SF Fandom
The Los Angeles Science Fiction League
The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society
LASFS, Inc.

The Start of Organized SF Fandom

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society is the world's oldest living science fiction club. However, the LASFS did not form spontaneously from a vacuum. It required the support of an organized science fiction fandom.

The pioneering science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, began monthly publication in April, 1926. It printed opinions and criticisms from its readers, along with their full addresses, in a "Discussions" column. Rejoicing in their newfound kindred, many early fans, most of high school and college age, began writing to each other. Within a few years, a group of two or three hundred of these pen pals around North America and Britain had formed a loose social association. Some organized more formally. A Science Correspondence Club was started during 1928, and began publishing a club magazine, The Comet, in May, 1930. By the early 1930s several of the more literate fans, individually or in collaboration, started their own amateur magazines in emulation of the professional SF magazines. The prevailing attitude and sense of purpose of these early fans and fanzines was the serious advancement of science fiction.

The earliest localized SF club was The Scienceers in New York City, which first met on December 11, 1929. Its fanzine, The Planet, began in July, 1930. In addition to amateur fiction and popular science articles, it reported on the meetings and social activities of the club. Copies of The Planet were mailed out to members of the fledgling SF fandom and encouraged many fans to start similar clubs in their own cities. These clubs usually drifted apart after a few months or years as their adolescent members developed other interests, but there were always some SF clubs to inspire new fans to create or join local clubs.

The Los Angeles Science Fiction League

In May, 1934, Wonder Stories announced the creation of the Science Fiction League, an international SF club which was to be coordinated through a column in the magazine. Members living in the same city were encouraged to get together and start a local SFL chapter. The first SFL chapters were on the East Coast, but on Saturday, October 27, 1934, seven Los Angeles SFL members and two guests met in the garage of member E. C. Reynolds. These nine fans sent a letter to Wonder Stories asking to become an SFL chapter. The Los Angeles Science Fiction League (LASFL) was granted a charter dated November 13, 1934 as the club's fourth chapter. The four stars on the LASFS coat of arms are there as a sign of how the club began.

The LASFL met irregularly during its first year. This changed when Forrest J Ackerman, a hyper-enthusiastic L.A. fan who was in college in San Francisco at the time, returned home at the beginning of 1936 and quickly became the club's most active member. Bolstered by Forry's efforts, LASFL began meeting regularly every other Thursday, starting in February, 1936, increasing to the first four Thursdays of the month in January, 1939 and then moving on to every Thursday by July, 1942. Forry became the nucleus of a group of similarly enthusiastic young fans such as Walter Daugherty, T. Bruce Yerke, Paul Freehafer, Ray Bradbury, and Ray Harryhausen, who together transformed the LASFL from a tiny literary discussion club into a lively social group. They invited all SF authors visiting or living in Los Angeles to come to the LASFL. Arthur J. Burks, Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Henry Kuttner, and other celebrities accepted the invitation. Note: It is a LASFS tradition that Forrest J Ackerman's name is deliberately spelled without a period after his middle initial.

Ackerman was particularly active in helping the LASFL publish its own mimeographed fanzines. They were full of humorous, pun-filled reviews and parodies of current SF, as well as discussions of the LASFL's picnics, holiday parties and group outings to scientific lectures at Cal Tech or the local planetarium in addition to the club meetings. These soon established the LASFL's reputation throughout budding SF fandom as "Shangri-L.A."; a paradise for young SF fans. This reputation helped L.A. fandom win the World Science Fiction Convention for 1942 (postponed until 1946 due to World War II).

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society

When the parent Science Fiction League began to fall apart in the late 1930s, Forry aided the club in staying alive by declaring its independence on March 27, 1940 as the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Forry remained active in the club for the next two decades. He seldom held a formal club office, but he was always there to keep things moving while others came and went. Forrest Ackerman was Mr. LASFS for thirty years. By the time he stopped participating regularly, in the mid-1960s, he left a firmly established club behind him.

The LASFS went through some drastic personality changes before settling down into its current self. SF fandom in the Thirties was dominated by intellectual young men who gave the original LASFL the atmosphere of a college fraternity. During the early Forties, the club almost self-destructed due to fannish politics. Cliques and factions battled, attempting to impeach club officers, arguing endlessly over trivial differences of opinion, and setting up rival local SF clubs. At the same time, with World War II in progress and most SF fans over 18 in the Armed Services, the LASFS took on the atmosphere of a fannish USO. Los Angeles was a major embarkation center for soldiers and sailors shipping out into the Pacific, and LASFS members were always ready to stop fighting long enough to greet and play host to fans in uniform passing through L.A. to the front.

Perhaps in reaction, as soon as the war ended, the club swung to the opposite extreme, shunning most fannish activities as irresponsible. The attitude was encouraged that fans should aspire to become professional SF authors, and several local writers including A. E. van Vogt, Ross Rocklynne and L. Ron Hubbard became regular participants. The LASFS instituted the "Fanquet", an annual banquet honoring those members who made their first professional SF sale. Several members did sell one or two short stories, and one, E. Everett Evans (for whom the Evans-Freehafer Award is co-named, with Paul Freehafer), became a minor popular author during the 1950s until his death in 1958. The first Fanquet winner to go on to a career as a major SF author was Larry Niven, whose Fanquet was in 1965. Niven still often attends LASFS meetings.

A major accomplishment of the LASFS in the late 1940s was the creation of the annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference , aka Westercon. At this time the only SF conventions were in the New York/Pennsylvania/New Jersey area, plus the annual World Science Fiction Convention which had come to Los Angeles in 1946 but was usually held in a city east of the Mississippi. Two LASFS members, Walter Daugherty and Dave Fox, felt that the fans in Western cities deserved their own annual convention. In 1948 the LASFS started the Westercon in emulation of the Worldcon. Los Angeles-area fans held the first three Westercons until the convention was well-enough established that fan clubs in such cities as San Diego and San Francisco were ready to host it. The Westercon has met in cities ranging from Vancouver, BC to Honolulu, HI to Boise, ID to El Paso, TX. The Westercon's Bylaws specify the LASFS as the archive of Westercon business and the default administrator in the case of the failure of any individual Westercon (which has never happened).

By the early 1960s the LASFS had worked through its extremes to become the casual, open-to-all interests club that it is today. There have always been some SF authors and artists who regularly attend meetings, from Fritz Leiber in the late Fifties and through most of the Sixties to Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and John DeChancie today. Other professional SF writers and artists who are LASFS members and who regularly attended meetings at one time or another, some of them even serving as club officers, include (in alphabetical rather than chronological order) Steven Barnes, George Barr, John Dalmas, Alan Dean Foster, David Gerrold, Stephen Goldin, Tim Kirk, David McDaniel aka Ted Johnstone, William Rotsler, and Norman Spinrad. Some were well-established when they moved to Los Angeles, and others became authors after joining the club as SF fans. But there is no longer any pressure on members to write professionally if they prefer to remain fans.

In the Sixties the LASFS regained the lively spirit of its beginnings, with the additional benefit of a growing female presence in SF fandom especially after the advent of Star Trek in Fall, 1966. The club became more family oriented, with several marriages between members during the Sixties and Seventies including Bjo & John Trimble, Len & June Moffatt, and Bruce & Elayne Pelz.

In 1964, members of the LASFS began APA-L, a weekly fanzine assembled at each club meeting consisting of individual contributions by members who find it convenient to communicate through "paper conversations" of usually two to four pages; with some people who do not attend the club's meetings contributing by mail. APA-L has had contributors from throughout North America and Europe. In 1976 the similar but monthly LASFAPA was started.

LASFS, Inc.

Fans began to specialize into sub-groups, with each sub-group devoted to a particular interest, such as hard-science SF, Tolkienish high fantasy, SF movies, comic books, specific movie and TV series including Star Trek and Dr. Who, roleplaying games, mystery/detective fiction, computer groups, even cliffhanger serials and old Westerns through the efforts of Charles Lee Jackson II. LASFS member Bjo Trimble organized letter-writing campaigns to keep Star Trek on the air, once after the first season and again after the second season. The Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, the first Japanese anime fan club, held its first meeting at the LASFS in May, 1977.

The LASFS bought its own property on Ventura Blvd. in 1973 to use as a clubhouse. In 1977 the LASFS sold its first clubhouse and bought a larger clubhouse at the current location on Burbank Blvd. in North Hollywood. The club acquired its first computer, an Altair, that year as a donation by Larry & Fuzzy (Marilyn) Niven; it was made a member as Altair Niven. In 1993 the club completed renovations to its front building, remodeling and doubling the size of its SF library which now contains well over 20,000 volumes. The LASFS went online with its own website in 1997.

In December, 1975 the LASFS presented LA 2000, a special convention to celebrate the club's 2,000th meeting. More a relaxicon than a convention in the traditional sense (such as featuring guests of honor or holding a formal program), the event was so enjoyable that it was repeated in 1976, moving to October to honor the club's anniversary and calling itself Loscon for the first time. The Loscon was held twice in 1977, the second that year being the first Loscon to have an official guest of honor, Jerry Pournelle. By 1978 it had settled into an annual November affair, the Los Angeles Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention and, starting with Loscon 9 in 1982, the Thanksgiving weekend has become traditional. Loscon 7 in 1980 was the first to top 1,000 members, and attendance has not dropped below a thousand since 1984. The Loscon was held in Pasadena from 1983 through 1989, in Burbank from 1993 through 2003, and in 2004 it returned to Los Angeles.

In the last quarter of the 20th century the LASFS began to blend and expand its social and literary activities. The annual Fanquet metamorphed into the LASFS Showcase and then into the LaLa-Con, first held in 1995; a two-day "Spring Fling relaxicon, social gathering and open house" held at Freehafer Hall. Attendance is limited to 150; the venue's maximum capacity. Traditional LaLa-Con events include a Plutonium Chili Cookoff on Saturday at noon; an Intergalactic Ice Cream Social on Saturday evening; and a Banquet on Sunday.

Several of LASFS's sub-groups have grown into independent clubs which traditionally meet at Freehafer Hall on an established weekend each month, including the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization and Cinema Anime (anime clubs), the Time Meddlers (Dr. Who), and TRIPE , FWEMS (Fourth Week-End Movie Series) and the Estrogen Zone (movie-watching clubs, both of them open to members of all genders). Members of these clubs are also the organizers of the annual Los Angeles-area Gallifrey One (Dr. Who) convention, and the Animé Los Angeles. convention.

For legal reasons, LASFS members incorporated a separate California non-profit organization in 1982, the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc. ( SCIFI), to be the sponsor and organizer of Worldcons, Westercons, NASFiCs (the North American Science Fiction Convention, held only when the Worldcon isn't in North America), and similar major events within the science-fiction community that are not a part of the LASFS. SCIFI organized the 1984, 1996, and 2006 Los Angeles Worldcons, the 1999 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) and the 1989, 1994 and 2002 Westercons. In 1997 SCIFI created the Fan Gallery, a growing gallery of portrait photographs of prominent SF authors and fans funded from the "Benefit to Fandom" money left over from the 1996 Worldcon surplus. The Fan Gallery was first exhibited at Loscon in 1997 and has become a regular display at Worldcons, Loscons and other conventions since then.

The LASFS has survived some traumatic shocks. The April, 1992 Los Angeles Riots began on a Thursday, which almost caused the club to cancel its weekly meeting for the first time since the early 1940s. (That meeting was attended by only a few fans who adjourned early to get home before the martial-law curfew.) After the January, 1994 6.7 magnitude Northridge Earthquake, and again during the October-November, 2003 Southern California wildfires, the LASFS became an information center for fans to keep in touch with each other and offer help.

A smaller tragedy has become common due to the "graying" of fandom; LASFS regular attendees for decades have started dying or becoming confined to their homes due to the infirmities of old age. In March, 2002 Bruce Pelz proposed the establishment of a status known as "Pillar of the LASFS." In order to qualify as a Pillar, the member must be dead. The member's estate, or friends, would then make a large, lump-sum donation to the LASFS, in an amount to be determined by the club. The proposal was being discussed when Pelz unexpectedly died in May of a pulmonary embolism. The creation of the Pillar of the LASFS Award was approved in June with the donation set at $4,000, and donations to make Pelz himself the first Pillar of the LASFS were raised within two months at the 2002 Westercon and Worldcon.

Fortunately, the LASFS is constantly adding young and enthusiastic SF fans to replace the departed. Some major LASFS events during 2004 included the club's 70th anniversary meeting and the 40th anniversary distribution of APA-L (#2058), both in October. The participants of both ranged from their founders to newcomers who only joined during 2004. The 2006 Worldcon, L.A.con IV, was held in Greater Los Angeles (Anaheim), and many newcomers discovered the club through that Worldcon. The LASFS is currently preparing to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2009.

LASFS's regular Thursday night meetings, with attendees starting to gather around 7:00 p.m., usually boast sixty to a hundred fans of all ages. About half the attendees participate in the formal meeting and program, which may include a speaker, an SF movie, a panel, or auctions of SF items. The rest are present to use the club's library (a trove of SF books, magazines, audio and video tapes, available to all members), or to gather in informal groups in various spots around the clubhouse to socialize, pursue their special interests, or work on individual club projects. (The LASFS has organized SF exhibits for local public and university libraries, and a committee has been publishing an annually updated "LASFS Recommended Reading List for Young Readers" since 1997, which has been requested by librarians across the country. The LASFS also maintains social contact with other major SF clubs throughout America.)

The clubhouse is also open every Friday night for more informal socializing and open gaming. In addition, on the Second Sunday of each month the LASFS hosts an open house for gaming fans. The LASFS ran a SF exhibition booth at the annual UCLA Book Fair for many years, and it still holds its annual "LaLaCon" two-day relaxicon each Spring.

There is something for every SF enthusiast at the LASFS! For more information call us on Thursday nights (or leave a message) at (818) 760-9234; or stop by the clubhouse at 11513 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood on Thursday or Friday evenings.