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Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society

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.

Abbreviation

LASFS

1934

NGO

Social

LASFS is the oldest continuously operating science fiction club in the world,[1] helped considerably in maintaining that record by being one of the few to have owned a clubhouse. The organization continues to hold regular weekly meetings on Thursdays. The club maintains a private lending library of books, videos, and other genre-related materials, for use by members.


Members of the club have run the World Science Fiction Convention several times, initiated the regional science-fiction convention Westercon, and hosts a yearly science fiction convention called Loscon.[2] It maintains a web site and discussion forum, publishes (at irregular intervals) an amateur magazine called Shangri L'Affaires, and hosts the collations of a weekly amateur press association, APA-L. The LASFS monthly newsletter, De Profundis, is named for the club motto, De Profundis ad Astra ("From the Depths to the Stars") and is available (in PDF format) for reading at the LASFS website, or can be obtained by writing its editor/publisher, Marty Cantor.

Officers[edit]

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[edit]

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.[8] 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".[9]

Official website

newsletter archives