The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, Inc., or LASFS, is a science fiction and fantasy fan society that meets in the Los Angeles area. The current meeting place can be found on the LASFS website.

LASFS is the oldest continuously operating science fiction club in the world,

By 1936, the League had begun to fail. New management was less interested in the League, and the members grew up and lost interest. Charter group number four, in Los Angeles, had an active member in Forrest J. Ackerman, who missed the first few meetings (he was living in San Francisco with his parents), but whose enthusiasm and imagination provided a focus for the group. "Forry" and a cadre of other members kept it alive as the science fiction and fantasy genres developed. Local authors (and sometimes those from out of the area) also helped by coming to meetings from time to time.

In 1939, the group broke with the Science Fiction League, changed its name to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, and begun to meet every Thursday.

In the 1950s, the club became embroiled in controversy, partly from taking the stand that if they didn't address controversies, they would fade away. Ackerman was still the mainstay of the club in the first part of the 1950s, but marriage and work needs led to his attending less frequently. One of the live wires of the club at this time was Bjo Trimble, a former WAVE who met her husband John under Ackerman's piano (at a crowded party).

In the 1960s the club continued to grow, with the effects of the counterculture of the 1960s adding new members from the surrounding suburbs of Southern California. Many members became fans of the newly created Star Trek television show, and in 1968 Trimble and other members of LASFS were instrumental in organizing a nationwide letter writing campaign which saved the show from its announced cancellation by NBC at the end of its second season.

thumb|People standing around talking at a party at the LASFS clubhouse

thumb|right|LASFS Library

The club's meeting place (called 'Freehafer Hall' by the members after member Paul Freehafer) was usually in a public meeting hall and so it would be forced to relocate from time to time. Over the decades it moved from central Los Angeles further west until it reached Santa Monica, "as far west as it could go and remain dry."

In 1964, member Paul Turner made what seemed to some like a frivolous suggestion, to others a brilliant idea: that the LASFS establish a building fund, generated from weekly meeting dues and fund-raising events such as auctions, with the idea of eventually purchasing its own permanent clubhouse. Members quickly began taking the idea seriously, and by the late 1960s, after a period of hesitation, Bruce Pelz became the building fund's most fervent supporter.

In 1973, less than 10 years after its inception, the LASFS building fund had enough money in the bank to purchase a small private residence on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City and convert it into the weekly meeting hall. By 1977, the club needed a newer, larger clubhouse, and so it sold the Ventura Boulevard property and purchased a property at 11513 Burbank Boulevard, about two blocks west of Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood, with two buildings: Freehafer Hall (the rear building), and "Building 4SJ" (fronting the Street). Building 4SJ was named after Forrest J Ackerman, and contained the society's lending library, furnished rooms for socializing, and a pay telephone.

On September 1, 2011, the organization moved to a new building in Van Nuys, which formerly housed a cabinet-making shop and a poker school.

In 2025, the club purchased a building at 8819 Reseda Blvd in Northridge, CA, for meetings. See the LASFS website for current meeting information.

Officers

The Treasurer is elected once a year; the other club officers are elected twice a year. The Board of Directors is elected on a staggered basis: 4, 4, and 3.

For the current list of officers and directors, please see the Contact LASFS page.

Cultural references

In the Hugo-nominated science fiction novel Fallen Angels by LASFS members Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (with Michael Flynn), LASFS' unofficial motto "Death Will Not Release You" and its even more unofficial countersign "... even if you die" play a pivotal role in plot development. The protagonist of Keith Laumer's 1968 novella The Day Before Forever describes the fashion styles in a future society as "like something from Westercon II".

References

  • newsletter archives