The Fredösphere

I spent yesterday in the company of Lutheran choral directors, yet survived.  Brian Altevogt hosted a Sacred Choral Symposium at Concordia University here in Ann Arbor.  These events are enjoyable, not the least because of the vespers service we sang together at the end of the day, in the lush sonic environment of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity.  A choir of choral directors is the best kind of choir; I suppose you could say a choir director is the ideal chorister in the way a prison guard is the ideal death row inmate, although if you said it you would be insane.

As a bonus, I present the strange world of vintage pulp science fiction novels ... in French.  Here's a page devoted to author Vargo Statten, who has books translated into many languages, and was "notorious" for cranking out streams of action-packed, but otherwise brainless, prose. There's something endearing about novels with titles like La Flamme Cosmique and La Bombe 'G' and Le Martien Vengeur (and I dig the vivid artwork too).  As in the case of French jazz, one feels the urge to speak patronizingly of French science fiction.  Heck, they deserve pity points just for giving the world Planet of the Apes.

(You can read up on John Russell Fearn, who wrote under pseudonyms like Vargo Statten, Volstead Gridban, and even Vector Magroon, here.)

Labels: PlanetOfTheApes, sci-fi, vocal