For nine years now, I have been the Lord High Janitor of The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. This means that every week, sometime before the LASFS meeting, I must see to it that the clubhouse has some modicum of cleanliness in which to hold the meeting. This sometimes daunting job requires an average of three hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year.
As an indirect result of this volunteer work I recently received a letter addressed to me personally at LASFS from Barbara Bush, wife of the President of the United States of America. In the letter she thanked me and the club for our efforts in support of literacy in America.
"What the hell", you may ask, "are you talking about?"
O.K., fair question (and watch your language).
Some years ago, I think it was June of 1988, I was elected to, what turned out to be, two six month terms as president of the LASFS. I had been Lord High Janitor for six years at that point. And, for over six years, I had gone to every LASFS meeting and every meeting of the society's board of directors that was held at the clubhouse. Also, I was (and am) distributor of the club newsletter, De Profundis. In other words, I was, as I am now, active in the club. This is the activity that gradually got me known to the club, and eventually resulted in my being elected president.
As President of LASFS, I did not have to take any shit from club members. After all, I had the gavel. But as Lord High Janitor, I still had to clean the toilets. I was top and bottom (so to speak) of the club. Everybody else was just filler (and mess makers).
I was at the clubhouse alone one day, cleaning up, when we got a phone call from a publisher of children's books in Wisconsin. The caller was an editor with Gareth Stevens Publishing who had heard about us from Forrest J Ackerman. Her company was putting together a series of books about science, for children ages nine to twelve, called Isaac Asimov's Library of the Universe. One of the books was going to be about science fiction. Her idea was to put, in the back of the book, some addresses of places their readers could write for more information about science fiction. She thought maybe LASFS could be one of those places. I thought to myself that since I am the president of the club, I could make that decision. So I told her I'd ask someone and get back to her.
At the next meeting I brought up the subject. The reaction of the general membership was something like "Yeah sure, Galen. Do whatever you want." The reaction of The Powers That Be was, "Sounds O.K., but who's going to do it?" That is to say, who was actually going to answer the kids who write in with questions? To which I said, "I will." I mean, the book would probably never make it to print anyway, right? I did, in fact, have some offers of help. The most notable was from Carol Ann Cranston, assistant LASFS literary librarian.
Two years passed.
Suddenly we started getting letters from kids in places like Utah and Wyoming, with requests like "Send me some information about science fiction." Some had specific questions, to which we responded with specific answers. I wrote the letters with the help of Carol Ann Cranston. Then she typed them and I sent them out. But what could you say to "send me information about science fiction"?
I knew that there would be people at LASFS who would not want to be involved. Early on, I had hoped to get assistance from author Larry Niven. I thought I could ask him a question or two if a child sent in a specific question that would best be answered by a professional and successful writer. Mr. Niven was at the club almost every week and so was accessible. Unfortunately, he would have none of it. He felt that answering questions for one child at a time was an inefficient use of his time. I approached no one else. Instead, I answered the questions from my own personal knowledge or opinion.
If people wanted to help, however, I felt there should be a way they could assist the suddenly active Children's Literature Committee. That was when I got the idea for the LASFS recommended reading list for kids ages nine to twelve. Nine to twelve was the target age for the children's book containing our address. A list like that would give me something to send in response to "send me information about science fiction". (Several kids, after asking for "information about science fiction", would say, "Send pictures." Now, what does that mean?) Anyone who wanted to help could do so with a very small output of time and energy.
Carol Ann made up a form with blank lines for people to write in the names of books they felt the LASFS should recommend to children. All told, about ten percent of the attending membership, and none of The Powers That Be, took part in the making of recommendations over the four months that I pushed the forms on the club. This was the summer of 1990.
Carol and I put the titles into alphabetical order by author. Then Carol typed up the list. I called that the first draft.
I took the first draft to LASFS and had the membership make suggestions on what should be added and removed. Carol typed up the second draft and I took it back to the club for more input. Everyone had many opportunities to make their suggestions known. No one was left out who didn't work at being left out.
When making up the list, I purposely did not consider availability as a factor in deciding whether or not to include a suggested title. I have no problem with recommending a book that has been out of print for thirty years if it is a good one. It remains good, in print or out. I felt my task was to make a list of good books the club recommends. Availability is someone else's problem. After all, just because a book is out of print today in no way means it will still be out of print tomorrow.
There were a very few books the club suggested that I thought should not be put on the list. One of these was Dracula by Bram Stoker. I consider Dracula to be a victorian sex fantasy aimed at adults of another culture and time. I felt it did not fit on a list for nine- to twelve-year-olds. Yet more than one person suggested it. It made me worry about what other books these perverts might be suggesting. I have not read most of the books on the list. Some of them I had never even heard of before. I relied on the input of club members to ferret out the inappropriate titles.
One thing that became obvious to me was that the list was, in many ways, above the level of the average nine- to twelve-year-old. So I just started calling it a list for young people ages nine and up. Now, a sixteen-year-old who gets the list won't simply throw it away; it isn't just for little kids.
I typed the final version of the list myself. I wanted it done in the exact fashion that I felt was most correct. Also, I was learning the word processing system WordStar on the club computer and I wanted to use it.
When I was finished with it, that list looked very nice. I've put a lot of work into it. It's a good list. It felt good to have done it. It would feel even better to use it. I would send a copy to every kid who wrote in . . . when they wrote in . . . if they wrote in.
They were not writing in.
Between January and September of 1990 almost two dozen people had written to the LASFS as a result of seeing our address in "Isaac Asimov's Library of the Universe" Science Fiction, Science Fact. About two thirds of those people were children. The rest were teachers and librarians. After about September no more letters came.
All along, as I responded to the queries, I had included a copy of the list in whatever unfinished form (drafts one or two) was most recent. Now the list was done (and damn, but it looked good), but no one was writing in anymore. So there it sat.
I felt the list was useful, too useful to just gather dust. Maybe more importantly, I put too much work into it for it to go to waste. I thought there were people out there who would want and could use a list like this, if only they knew about it.
If only they knew about it.
How could I tell them about it? How could I get the word out? Maybe a press release? O.K., a press release!
I wrote a press release. I showed the draft around the club and made some minor changes. So, who do I send it to? And how many do I send?
I talked this over with the current president of LASFS, Charles Lee Jackson, II. He suggested that we have the Post Office print up some spiffy pre stamped envelopes with the LASFS return address on them. We could get five hundred of them for one hundred and sixty dollars.
O.K., five hundred was a nice number. That's how many would be sent. But what about paying $160 for nice printed and stamped envelopes? Would the club do it?
The LASFS had lots of envelopes; thousands of envelopes that club treasurer Elayne Pelz had gotten for free from her place of employment, Ashton-Tate. They all had the Ashton-Tate logo and (incorrect) return address on them. I was afraid she would balk at the idea of LASFS paying $160 for envelopes.
So I lied.
I told her the money was for stamps. I felt this was an acceptable lie because it was mostly true: $145 for postage, and $15 for the envelopes and the printing on the envelopes. I thought that was a reasonable price.
Actually, I had been given $200 by a vote of the club for the purpose of producing and mailing a press release. In putting out the release, I could spend the money any way I wanted. I chose to spend $160 on envelopes and postage, and $40 for printing the release itself. It worked out fine.
To where should these press releases be sent?
Back at the beginning of this year, 1991, I had sent out notices of the availability of the LASFS list to big name fan publications like Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle and File 770. That had produced a handful of requests for the list. But most fans already know what they like. They don't need to be told by us.
No, I felt the real need for our list would be in the mundane world, outside fandom. Children, parents, teachers, librarians all could use, and might want, a recommended reading list of imaginative literature for young people.
I went to the library and did research. I spent two dozen hours there copying addresses for newspapers in every state in the union, and, in addition, newsletters for libraries, parents organizations and magazines for children. I did most of the research at the main North Hollywood branch library. I also did some work in the library on the campus of the California State University at Northridge. I ended up with four hundred and eighty addresses. About seventy percent of them were newspapers. Ten or twelve went to television stations in L.A.
I spent ten or fifteen more hours hand copying the addresses onto the envelopes, then stuffing the envelopes.
On April 22, 1991 I mailed them out. Whew!
I had no idea what would come of all this (I still don't, for the most part), but it was exciting. Something was going to happen!
If every publication I sent a release to published that information, I knew I would be deluged. I did not expect to be deluged. I also did not expect that nothing would happen. I expected to get requests for the list. I got them . . . only a few at first from some people who had received the press release.
The release announced that the list exists and is free to anyone who sends us a self addressed stamped envelope. (If they don't give us an envelope, they will get the impression that the list came from Ashton-Tate. Boy, will they be confused!) The release told a little about LASFS and why the list might be useful.
A week or two after the release went out, Charlie Jackson told me about a phone call from Roger McBain, a newspaperman in Indiana, who was trying to reach me. I talked with the reporter by phone the next day. The result was a very good, informative and factual article that appeared in The Sunday Courier for Evansville, Indiana on Sunday May 5, 1991 (page F-3). This article was better than anything the local press ever did on us.
Next was a paragraph-length notice that appeared in the Nebraska Library Commission Communicator. It used information from the press release only.
In the first month after I mailed the press release, I received over seventy requests for the list. The most I received in any single day, so far, was fifteen. In most cases I was able to send the list back in the very next day's mail. More than half of these requests came from Indiana and Nebraska, the centers for fan activity in the twenty first century!
In the last few days (as I write this, on the first of June), I have started getting requests for the list from Virginia and New Mexico. Something has happened in those two states, but I don't yet know what.
I expect that more publications will print information about our list. I don't expect any of those publications to be newspapers. Sending the press release to newspapers was like throwing them at a black hole: They go in, but nothing good comes out. (To carry the simile further: Like a black hole emitting X-rays, the Ventura Star-Free Press emitted a condescending and insulting little fart, written by Peter B. Smith, that resulted in two or three requests for the list.) Evansville was a fluke. I expect even less from TV. It is with the library system in-house publications that my hope lies. School librarians and other librarians for children can see the use for such a list.
This summer I will again attempt to involve the LASFS in the Children's Literature Committee. I want to expand the list with more young adult titles.
For all the people who complain that titles they feel should be on the list are not on the list, this is yet another chance to get the titles in question on the list. This does not mean they will do it. Oh, no! Too many club members find it much easier to complain that a title is missing from the list than to write the author and title down for me so I can include it.
It will be their choice. I will beg and whine and cry, and explain over and over again that if they just write the title and author on the form, I can put it in the expanded list. The ten percent that helped before will help again. I have no doubt that the complainers will refrain from assisting but not from complaining.
I plan to have the expanded list out in the late fall or early winter of 1991.
Oh yes! We got that note from Barbara Bush.
As I understood it, one of the pet projects of Barbara Bush, wife of the President (of the United States), was the campaign for literacy. One of the reasons that I gave in the press release for the list's usefulness was that reading imaginative literature was fun. Kids who find reading fun will read, and so will not be illiterate. In other words, the list is useful in the campaign for literacy. So I wrote Barbara a letter telling her what we were up to. I mailed that a day or two after the press releases were sent.
She was so happy to hear we have a recommended reading list for young people. She said "...Having a good reading list of interesting books is helpful." She wished us "continuing success". Well, if she's happy, I'm happy.
If you want a copy of the LASFS list as it stands now, send a
self-addressed, stamped long envelope to:
Recommended Reading List
c/o LASFS Inc.
11513 Burbank Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601-2309
GAT
June 1991
Go to morbius-tripp (Home)
Me!