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Shangri-La, issue 5, March-April 1948
Page 2
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in disregard of the decision, reached by vote, not to send the mag there. (I know that Charlie thinks his flouting of the club's policy was not the real reason for his dismissal or his voluntary resignation---choose one. However, I think that the club organ would have been his to do with almost as he wished for an indefinite period, had he not elected to disregard that single request of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. I may be wrong, but I sincerely believe this to be true.) I'm just sorry about the whole thing, really I am. But being sorry about it isn't enough. I'm going to try to explsin a little. I'm not excited about the matter, but I am convinced that the picture is distorted. I don't feel that fandom is looking at the LASFS correctly. To begin with, I did not covet Charlie's job. It took me ten years of off-again, on-again activity to beg in even one fan magazine: "Ichor," a literary pub whose readers are drawn from fandom, secondarily, and from outsiders, primarily. I took the job only because there was no editor of the last issue; I was only the co-ordinator, and it was damn' little that I did. I worked at my job with the State Department of Motor Vehicles all day on the day S-La was gotten together. Until I arrived after dinner, a couple of telephone calls had to suffice as editing. With this issue, I become a little more a functioning official. But---please remember that a good magazine cannot be published if little good material is submitted; that no one can make-do without the wherewithal. A lot of readers have written that I may not be a usurper but that I appear to be. (God love 'em, they're fans of Burbee, too.) Please, people, consider me a necessary evil, at least. Don't regard me as a gopher in the garden of Allah, a shark in the goldfish bowl, or even as a moth in your pet cravat. I regard Laney's two blasts as ill-timed and misdirected. Let me explain "ill-timed," first. He waited until the club's questionable element had passed away---until the pansies no longer bloomed in our little hot-house universe on Bixel Street. I'm not denying that the club, before Laney loosed his bolts, had several people about who might dilate the eyes of Doctor Kinsey. Yes, that's true. However, never did I see a person in the clubroom who was not socially acceptable. Those people deported themselves with decorum while at meetings. They were well-dressed, clean-shaven, and betrayed no index to their suspected-by-few character---not by speech or by action. I've questioned people who have been with the club for many years, and they agree that nothing objectionable was ever committed by any person attending meetings. You'll have to take my word for this---my word that I asked those people, that what they told me was true, and that I"m on the level in general. I've attended at least one club meeting each month since arriving in the city two years ago with the purpose of finishing college. (I'm a senior now.) Never have I opened the door to the clubroom and been met with a flutter of butterfly hands, the patter of softly-running words, or the felicitous falling of bobby-pins. That's what I mean by "ill-timed." AT the time of the publication of the first article, our acceptable-but-nonetheless fans were pale lillies fast fading out of the memory, even. Anachronistic Mr. Laney. When I say "misdirected," I mean that he attached us where we were not especially vulnerable. Why didn't he say that meetings were often dull---in fact, that periods of doldrums were absolutely unrelieved by really worthwhile meetings? Why didn't he, without mentioning names too nastily, point out that stagnation was the order of the day---any day? So far, only one man has been attacked by name...and Laney appears ready to recall this for a new appraisal. (See the latest FAPA in regard to this.) (continued on page 18)
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in disregard of the decision, reached by vote, not to send the mag there. (I know that Charlie thinks his flouting of the club's policy was not the real reason for his dismissal or his voluntary resignation---choose one. However, I think that the club organ would have been his to do with almost as he wished for an indefinite period, had he not elected to disregard that single request of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. I may be wrong, but I sincerely believe this to be true.) I'm just sorry about the whole thing, really I am. But being sorry about it isn't enough. I'm going to try to explsin a little. I'm not excited about the matter, but I am convinced that the picture is distorted. I don't feel that fandom is looking at the LASFS correctly. To begin with, I did not covet Charlie's job. It took me ten years of off-again, on-again activity to beg in even one fan magazine: "Ichor," a literary pub whose readers are drawn from fandom, secondarily, and from outsiders, primarily. I took the job only because there was no editor of the last issue; I was only the co-ordinator, and it was damn' little that I did. I worked at my job with the State Department of Motor Vehicles all day on the day S-La was gotten together. Until I arrived after dinner, a couple of telephone calls had to suffice as editing. With this issue, I become a little more a functioning official. But---please remember that a good magazine cannot be published if little good material is submitted; that no one can make-do without the wherewithal. A lot of readers have written that I may not be a usurper but that I appear to be. (God love 'em, they're fans of Burbee, too.) Please, people, consider me a necessary evil, at least. Don't regard me as a gopher in the garden of Allah, a shark in the goldfish bowl, or even as a moth in your pet cravat. I regard Laney's two blasts as ill-timed and misdirected. Let me explain "ill-timed," first. He waited until the club's questionable element had passed away---until the pansies no longer bloomed in our little hot-house universe on Bixel Street. I'm not denying that the club, before Laney loosed his bolts, had several people about who might dilate the eyes of Doctor Kinsey. Yes, that's true. However, never did I see a person in the clubroom who was not socially acceptable. Those people deported themselves with decorum while at meetings. They were well-dressed, clean-shaven, and betrayed no index to their suspected-by-few character---not by speech or by action. I've questioned people who have been with the club for many years, and they agree that nothing objectionable was ever committed by any person attending meetings. You'll have to take my word for this---my word that I asked those people, that what they told me was true, and that I"m on the level in general. I've attended at least one club meeting each month since arriving in the city two years ago with the purpose of finishing college. (I'm a senior now.) Never have I opened the door to the clubroom and been met with a flutter of butterfly hands, the patter of softly-running words, or the felicitous falling of bobby-pins. That's what I mean by "ill-timed." AT the time of the publication of the first article, our acceptable-but-nonetheless fans were pale lillies fast fading out of the memory, even. Anachronistic Mr. Laney. When I say "misdirected," I mean that he attached us where we were not especially vulnerable. Why didn't he say that meetings were often dull---in fact, that periods of doldrums were absolutely unrelieved by really worthwhile meetings? Why didn't he, without mentioning names too nastily, point out that stagnation was the order of the day---any day? So far, only one man has been attacked by name...and Laney appears ready to recall this for a new appraisal. (See the latest FAPA in regard to this.) (continued on page 18)
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