Scithers SFL Hoax
In early 1980, LASFS received a letter in the mail written on Science Fiction League stationary. The rocket appeared to have been redone, but it was definitely the SFL logo. The signature was illegible and the return address unknown.
The letter announced that LASFS's application to rejoin the SFL had been accepted. (The SFL was an international fan organization that dissolved in the late 1930s. LASFS had begun as Chapter 4 of the SFL and continued on after it dissolved.) LASFS was annoyed, as its members felt that LASFS had more right to revive the SFL than most. On behalf of LASFS, Milt Stevens responded sharply.
But a few months later, when then Asimov's editor George Scithers was in LA for the Nebula Awards Banquet, he admitted that he — a member of The Cult — had hoaxed LASFS. He'd read in a report on a meeting that LASFS had a joke motion to refound the SFL, so he got fan artist Jim Odbert to redraw the SFL logo, and then sent the letter off, giving the back door of Davis Publications (where he worked at the time) as the return address.
Reported in File 770 21, p. 20.
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