Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society

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.

Forrest J Ackerman later wrote, "The first meetings of the club were held in what was called the Pacific Electric Building in downtown Los Angeles.

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.

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.

Building 4SJ was named after Forrest J Ackerman, and contained the society's lending library, furnished rooms for socializing, and a pay telephone.

[5] 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 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".