Science Fiction and Fantasy

Books

Radio

Fanzines

Bibliographies

Awards

Fannish Activities

• Organized Fandom Conventions
  LASFS Conventions
  Westercon®
  General Fandom Conventions
  Specialized Fandom Conventions
  Convention Listings
• Fannish Discussions
  Fannish Discussions (electronic)
  Fannish Discussions (paper)
• Other Southern California SF Clubs
• Tours
• LASFS Photos
• Fannish Funds
• LASFS History
• Fannish Jargon (Fanspeak)

File 770
Locus Online
Ursa Major Awards: Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award for excellence in the furry (aka "funny animals") arts
News about Fred Patten

Filkradio
Hour 25

Efanzines: Marty Cantor describes this website as "One of the best links to much of traditional fandom is www.efanzines.com . Sure, if one does not scroll down very far, one would think that it is just fanzines (in pdf and html format). But scroll down to the bottom half oand you will find material of historical interest (such as photographs from earlier Worldcons, and trip reports), and scads of special publications. There are links to hundreds of fanzines at other sites and links to lots of other fannish resources, information about fan funds, and links to other sites of fan interest."

Poul Anderson's "On Thud and Blunder"

John DeChancie's website (complete with a mini-novel)

Filk: SF fans have been writing songs (sometimes parodies, sometimes to original music) since at least the 1940s, but they didn't start calling them "filksongs" until the early 1950s. That was when Lee Jacobs mistyped "folk" as "filk" in a fanzine article on folk music. Karen Kruse (later Karen Anderson) liked the word and used it to describe the long-standing fannish phenomenon, and the use caught on. See Karen's December, 1955 SAPSzine article on filksongs.

John Hertz's "The English Regency and Me"

Writings by Larry Niven

And it's not on the webpage but if you've got Niven's All the Myriad Ways or N-Space, reread "What Can You Say about Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers," which was loosely based on Tom Digby

writings by Fred Patten
Fred Patten's "A Chronology of Furry Fandom"
Robin Leyden's & Fred Patten's "How Kimba Came to Be". Patten writes: "This article was originally published in 1981, not 1991. Since 1981 it was updated several times with new information and some corrections. The most recent version was published as a booklet with the Kimba DVD Boxed Set from The Right Stuf International."

Jerry Pournelle's website: Chaos Manor

Rotsler's Rules for Masquerades

Kay Shapero's Website: Filks, Furries and Fanzines

Barry Weissman's "The Cure" (the story that Harlan Ellison said was too disgusting to appear in a Dangerous Visions

And there are two collections of artwork by Jack Harness, stored at

LASFS Conventions

La-La Con: A Spring-time Relaxacon held at the LASFS clubhouse each year. It is affectionately dubbed "LaLaCon" but each year has a new name.

Loscon: An LA area convention held each year on Thanksgiving weekend. Each year has its own name and theme.

Westercon

A major accomplishment of the LASFS in the late 1940s was the creation of the annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (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). See Westercon to find out when and where this year's and next year's conventions will take place.

Westercon is a registered service mark of LASFS, Inc. It is held every year on a weekend near the 4th of July, in the western part of the United States (as defined in its bylaws).

General Fandom Conventions

Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention): The gathering of fans of SF books, television, movies, comix, etc. from all over the world; members vote to award the Hugo Awards: Traditionally, the Worldcon takes place on or near the Labor Day weekend, but this tradition is sometimes broken.

Baycon A Memorial Day weekend convention in the Silicon Valley

Condor: A late winter convention in San Diego

Specialized Fandom Conventions

Anime Los Angeles: a January anime convention in the Los Angeles area

Califur: An annual furry fandom convention in the LA area.

ConChord: a filksong convention held annually in the San Fernando Valley in August or September. Filk singing began in organized science fiction fandom and still has considerable overlap with it.

Consonance: a March filksong convention in the Silicon Valley

Costume-Con: a national convention for people who delight in creating costumes. The convention has its roots in science fiction and fantasy conventions and historic re-enactment type events, but all forms of costuming are welcome. Each Spring, it's in a different city, run by a different group of fans.

DunDraCon: a February roleplaying convention in Northern California

Gallifrey One: a California, February Doctor Who and British media convention

Gaylaxicon the annual international Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror convention for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people and their friends.

Mythcon: Annual national conference of the Mythopoeic Society, held in July or August. Each conference is centered around a theme related to Inklings studies and/or fantastic and mythic literature.

The Society for Creative Anachronism: The kingdom of Caid (Southern California): see their Calendar for tourneys and other get-togethers.

Convention Listings
Answers.com
Convention Listings by Jenga
Locus
Lycos
SciFiSpace - Convention Calendar
Yahoo

Fannish Discussions - electronic

alt.callahans: a newsgroup: traffic may be quite heavy, non-moderated so there may be a lot of spam. There is a Wikipedia entry on alt.callahans. Other virtual Callahan's bars: Callahanians and Callahan's Place on Live Journal. in the latter, Talvinamarich reports a a virtual Callahan's on Second Life:
"in Key West in New Conch Republic(215,162,22)" or you can search for "Callahan's" in Places.

apa-lasfs: a Yahoogroups mailing list. Click to subscribe. Mention your interest in fandom so the manager will know you're not a spammer. Note: There is no legal relationship between this mailing list and the LASFS, but many of the mailing list members are LASFS members.

LiveJournal LASFS Community: You'll have to sign up with Live Journal to make comments.

rec.arts.sf.fandom: a newsgroup, also referred to as "rasff" ("razz-eff")

rec.music.filk: a newsgroup

Silicon Soapware: a monthly personalzine by LASFS member Tom Digby (now living in the Silicon Valley) archives , with subscription instructions at the bottom of each zine, plus ss_talk, a mailing list with most comment chains initially based on the zine and subscription instructions at the bottom of each zine.

The Virtual Fan Lounge: a bimonthly chat, on Las Vagrants, on the first and third Saturdays of each month. This webpage will have "live and re-broadcast video feeds when available and will feature slide shows of fannish photos, cartoons or other graphics when there's no video to show." Registration and sign-in is only required to participate, not to read.

Fannish Discussions - paper

APA-L: Collated every Thursday evening at the start of the LASFS meeting. Go to the APA-L room on the west side of Freehafer Hall (the back building. Newcomers may pick up a free copy on each of their first three meetings. Bring 29 copies of your zine to a LASFS meeting, and you'll get a copy of that night's APA-L. Official Collator: Marty Cantor

LASFAPA: A monthly APA with limited entry. Contact Marty Cantor for further details.

Many other fannish APAs (Amateur Press Associations) exist. See Wikipedia's List of APAs .

Enigma: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Gaming at UCLA

Orange County Science Fiction Club: contact DaveRMoore@aol.com OCSFC also has a Yahoo! group.

Planet Lambda: a science fiction club for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and trans-gender people and their friends. Meetings are held monthly at different locations in the greater Los Angeles area. Now a member of the Gaylaxian Science Fiction Society

S.P.E.C.T.R.E., the Caltech Science Fiction Club

Yahoo list of SF Clubs

JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Fan Photo Album (LASFS pages)
Chaz Boston Baden's Picture Gallery
Galen Tripp's LASFS photo pages
The Mills Photo Archive
Our Scrapbook

LASFS Funds: Donations to LASFS are tax-deductible. Contact the Treasurer to donate to one of these (except Pillar Funds)

Roxy Mills's Fan History (see LASFS in the 60s)
Helen Smith's memories
LASFS Wikipedia article
Forry autobiography part VIII
Archive of LASFS Fanzines from the 1960s
Article about "Imagination," from All Our Yesterdays
Memories of the VALSFA
Partners in Wonder: Women And the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 by Eric Leif