The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society is the country’s oldest such society. It’s members are the nicest geeks you’ll ever meet. And they meet up every Thursday.
On a side street in Van Nuys is a building painted a pale shade of yellow with a sign that says DE PROFUNDIS AD ASTRA — "from the depths to the stars." Spelled in larger letters is the name of the 79-year-old club: the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
This is the organization's third clubhouse, and, consensus holds, its nicest, although members of the club complained that the street had limited parking.
Ariane Lange
The clubhouse faces a hulking power relay station whose transformers and beams evoke the tomorrow of yesterday.
Ariane Lange
While I was outside taking a photo of the mailbox, a woman with dark purple-tinged hair and large clear glasses opened the front door and told me she was Michelle Pincus. We'd spoken on the phone (she's the registrar).
She led me into the fluorescent light of the club, whose acronym she pronounced loss-fiss.
Ariane Lange
Pincus took me to a courtyard called the Null Space after Bob Null. She referred to the dead man as an "animationally challenged member."
Before we went out to the courtyard, she chuckled and said, "You have to understand, death does not release you," and she gestured to the resting place of Charles William Rotsler's ashes; the club keeps his brass urn in a glass cabinet.
"Some of us are closer to each other than we are to our actual family," said the club's president, Eylat Poliner. (For Poliner, LASFS became actual family — later Poliner introduced me to her husband of 16 years, and when she said they did not meet in the club, Mark said, "We did meet in the club. Yes, dear, we did.")
In the Null Space, Pincus told me a story about the lemon tree she was standing next to, and Charles Lee Jackson II came out into the courtyard and told her he was going home and skipping the weekly Thursday meeting because of some controversy related to soap. He walked back inside in a huff, but he stayed for the whole evening.
Ariane Lange
