Ernest Hogan's Blog

Getting ready for a road trip in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Triggering another Chicano identity crisis:

Which gets complicated:

Who is that vato in the mirror?

And wanna talk about complicated?

I heard that to read Joyce's Ulysses on a phone wasblasphemous, so I had to do it. 

I get it now--the Irish are the Chicanos of Britain. All themlinguistic shenanigans. I probably wouldn’t have dreamed of the stuff I pulledin High Aztech and Cortez on Jupiter if it wasn’t for good oldJames Joyce. Civilization ain't nothing but colliding, fighting, fuckingstreams of consciousness. Inverting Homer’s Odyssey–inverting the spacefrom outer to inner–is a good way to demonstrate it.

And the obscenity gets shattered with one hot lick for man, onegiant, nasty slurp for literature, as it broke the legal obscenity barrier withhelp of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, andHenry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. 

Why aren’t they included in our celebrations of banned books? DareI mention the Marquis de Sade? Imagine cute teen hipsters wearing FREE DE SADET-shirts . .  .

Ah, my kind of fun.

I finished it in the waiting room while my wife was getting a wisdomtooth yanked. While I drove her home she was still high on the drugs andgrilled me like a stoned lit professor. That was fun too.

Would it also be blasphemous to say that I got into Joyce by way ofscience fiction? Some of you are picking their jaws off the floor, but I’mprobably not the only one, being a New Wave baby, coming of age in the earlySeventies, reading things like Philip José Farmer’s Riders of the PurpleSage and Richard Lupoff’s With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old NewAlabama in the first two Dangerous Visions volumes. There was alsoBrain W. Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head, Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren,Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy, and probablyothers that I don’t remember. A whole fricking lost subgenre waiting to beunearthed and explored. 

And in a Feliniesque sequence written before Federico was born, Ulyssesactually does get kinda sci-fi:

All you students and academics in need of ideas feel free toplunder. I’m probably not going to do anything with it. I don’t need it. I’m afountain of ideas.

Fountain of ideas. Stream of consciousness . . .  Slurp . . .Hmm . . . 

Are we blasphemous enough yet?

Back when I was a wage slave for Borders Book Music & Cafe(for you younger folks, it was a big box bookstore, kinda like Barnes &Noble, but more pretension), the phone rang. I answered like a proper corporateandroid, and a gentleman inquired, “Are you doing anything for Bloomsday?”

“Uh . . . not really,” I answered, knocked back into human mode.

“Harumph. Well, do you know perhaps of a local literary guild thatwould be doing something?”

Did he know that we were in Phoenix, Arizona? He might as well beasking for a society dedicated to hunting penguins, mermaids, and/orunicorns. 

Poor fellow. I wonder what happened to him? 

What might he think of these musings?

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Chicanonautica art manifests in Paris. Read about it at La Bloga.

It triggered a Oaxaqueño flashback:

Ah, Paris:

 
Art:

And protest:

Another climate change summer coming to an apocalyptic end. I never thought it could outdo the last one, but it does. Isn't it against some law of physics?

Somehow, in the middle of it all, my wife and I manage to find things that are strange and wonderful and worthwhile, to navigate the horror and madness.

Creativity seems to be the key. Always have something squirming around in your brain. Put your own spin in theuniverse. After all, you are the universe experiencing itself. Do something back when it does things to you.

Pay attention. Keep your sensory array scanning. Move around. Go places. Cherchez le weird, cabrones!

Life is interactive. Like a bullfight. Tauromaquia is the mother of all artforms, from the Neanderthal rodeo to the spaghetti western to the existential shootout between democracy and fascism in the early 21st century. Yeah, you never know if you're the matador or the bull. . .

It’s all mysterious artifacts, out of context, in unlikely locations in the end. Revel in the rasquache scramble. The landfill is archaeology is a treasure trove. All over. All the time.

Weird shit. Weird creatures and beings. Weirder than the stereotypes that society simplifies it all into. 

 

Culture is not what you think. Art is war. Is this not the dystopia you ordered? Would you like to speak to the manager?

And just who is piloting this vehicle? Look around. You are.

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 Because Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I is out. Read about it in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Grito as in: 

But this year is going to be different:

Our futurism has been brewing:

And representation isn't enough:

It’s almost over, thisXicanxfuturist summer, and it’s another different world. I expect to hear aboutan invasion of Antarctica any day now. Is it martial law yet? Fascism? 

I’m so sick ofcomplaining about it. You can only sing the dystopia/apocalyptic homesick blues for so long.

You can also only sitholed up in an air-conditioned environment for so long.(Phoenix is like a Mars colony, onlyon Mars it would be cold, but who knows, once the anthropogenic side-effectsstart kicking in . . .) My wife and I have our wild imaginations,and we also have been able to manage some overnight, out-of-town getaways tocooler climes that aren’t as far away as you’d imagine.

Sedona, Flagstaff,Cottonwood, Jerome. All very different from the Phoenix Metro area.

Different worlds. They'reall over, if you have the right kind of eyes hooked to the right kind of brain.

I don’t see “theSouthwest” as the creature the Eastern-oriented dominant culture tries to enforce. I seeAztlán.

I don’t mean any kind ofseparatist/secessionist fantasy that scared the racists into building walls andsending in troops. They shouldn’t worry—when I set my sci-fi worldbuilding mindcontemplating plausible scenarios they all collapse under the pesky details.Like the zombie apocalypse, it ain’t gonna happen.

My Aztlán is an alternatereality conjured up when I see through a glorious rasquache scramble into theWild West mythology, down to its pre-Columbian roots.

My imagination takes off.I want to rearrange it all into locations, props, and concepts for thesurrealistic spaghetti western of my dreams. No, I haven’t even begun workingon a screenplay. I’m too busy being the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.Besides, who’s going give me the money for such an insane project? I’m going tohave to settle for living it.

And what a life it is!

When I look through the photosI take on these trips, I’m delighted. Did it all really happen?

Sometimes we don’thave to go that far. There’s a lot of great places in Downtown Glendale, not farfrom Hacienda Hogan.

All over Metro Phoenix,and metastasizing into the surrounding deserts, every available lot is beingfilled with apartment buildings that look like dystopian backdrops. Theredoesn’t seem to be any thought to where the people will work. Yeah, there’ssome talk about tech industries, but I don’t see any sign of them. Maybe theflying saucers full of middle managers will arrive tomorrow. Hopefully they won't be from South Korea.

Worse yet, there’s nothought of where these people will live, as in have FUN.

The Aztlán I dream of isa human environment, full of places like the towns Emily and I like to visit. Notquite utopia, but something to work towards.

Meanwhile, at work, Ilook out the window and see excavators chewing up the remains of one of lastof the malls. We are told that a “walkable village” will be built there. Meanwhile, they're on the verge of declaring martial law in Washington DC. 

The celebrations of Mexican Independence Day in Chicago has been canceled due to the arrival of the National Guard. No grito there, but on 16 de septiembre, Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow is launching as scheduled. Let the cultural revolution begin . . .

Chicanonautica, and La Bloga announces me teaching "Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style" again during the Fall Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop. 

 

Secrets of ancient Chicano sci-fi widsom from the dark recesses of my brain can be yours:

 

More ancient than you think:

I stop short of Ernesto brain tacos and monkey brain sushi:

Not to be confused with chicken tacos:

 

Took me the better part of this batshit year to finish The Last Dangerous Visions. I read other stuff in between and got distracted a lot. I mostly liked it. There were a few pieces that I really enjoyed, and some that were just okay, in my humble opinion. And I had questions. 

The afterword answered them. 

Harlan’s problem, besides being bipolar, was his incredible imagination. He could imagine several helluvalots beyond what is possible. It can be frustrating. I know from personal experience.

And after a point, imagination, like talent, becomes dysfunctional. I know about that, too.

Then there’s the whole idea of dangerous visions. It changes, the way society does. 1975, 2025. Two very different worlds. 

These days, most readers (if we can trust the publishers) want cozy reading. Even thrillers, horror, and dystopias reassure us of the delusions that we live by.

But we do need to look beyond what we feel comfortable with. It’s survival. And why we have art and literature.

The table of contents isn’t quite the boy’s club that the first two volumes were. I can attest that as late as the 1980s female genre writers were rare. Really.

A lot of the writers are dead. Worse yet forgotten. For some it was one of the only times they were published. 

We aren’t treated well. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be writers . . .

There weren’t any with the life-changing impact on me like Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riders of the Purple Wage” or Richard A. Lupoff’s “With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old New Alabama.” The world still isn’t ready to consider that high-tech socialism could be fun, or that racism could be possible on a galactic scale. There were some close calls, but . . . maybe I’ve become grotesquely jaded in my old age.

Some say that you can’t write dangerous stuff in our society where offending is considered a capital offense. Nonsense. You can write anything you want. It's getting published that’s the problem.

I find that to be dangerous, all I have to do is be myself.

I could have been in TLDV. 

Shortly after I moved in with Emily in Arizona, Harlan called my parents—the phone number was on a flyer I had sent him. Things were crazy, and I was hard to track down. He never caught up with me, so I have no idea what it was about. At the time, I thought that TLDV was a done deal and was never going to happen. He may have heard of my reputation as the notorious author of “The Frankenstein Penis." Or maybe he just wanted to say hi. We’ll never know. <font size="6">@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</font>

Maybe it’s all for the best. I’m causing enough trouble as it is.

And oh, what a dangerous world we’ve made. Dangerous visions maybe that only way out.

Thank you, Harlan.

And you, too, J. Michael Syraczinski. 

Stay dangerous, my friends.

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Chicanonautica announces Our Creative Realidades: A Nonfiction Anthology being a finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award, at La Bloga.

 

My essay "Lost in Trumptopia" is part of the book. And guess what? We're still lost. Still there:

 And he's still him:

 Ready to give it all away:

What ever happened to saving America?

The summer burns hotter now. Is that fascism I smell? What do you read in times like this?

THE FINAL POGROM by Dan Simmons

Could the title be a reference to Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme, one of my all-time favorites? Got my interest, but no. The story is mondo dangerous, and morerelevant than ever, even though there are signs it was written long ago. Viruses are developed as tools for genocide. Holocaust, anyone? Makes High Aztech look cozy. And there is no humor.

INTERMEZZO 7: THE SPACE BETWEEN THEOBVIOUS by D.M. Rowles

Yeah, a bit of a breather was needed after ‘Pogrom’ still a good bit of flash fiction.

FALLING FROM GRACE by Ward Moore 

Time renders everything incomprehensible. Memory has its limits. The lesson of the story of Atlantis, and all of archaeology is that your civilization will someday be lost. It’s sad, but the story is hilarious. Laughing can be dangerous.

FIRST SIGHT by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Still another variation on that classic trope of first contact. Clever ideas, but talky.

INTERMEZZO 8: PROOF by D.M.Rowels

Another short, intense gut punch. This time about blood and guts.

BINARY SYSTEM by Kay Hartenbaum 

The awful truth is, space travel ain’t gonna be what science fiction fans think. Heresy, but true. Will working on a spaceship be best suited for people who’ve been stripped of both theiridentity and humanity? Hmm. Maybe this one is more dangerous than I first thought.

DARK THRESHOLD by P.C. Hodgell

A metaphor for death. As I get older, I don’t find death to be so dangerous. Ho hum.

THE DANHANN CHILDREN LAUGH  by Mildred Downey Broxon

Not a bad story. Well written, but rather routine. A retarded (yeah, we’re not supposed to use the word, but they haven’t come up with a suitable replacement—as if it’s the very concept that they want to eliminate) child turns out to be a changeling. I have a brother with that affliction, and growing up with him made me more human.

JUDAS ISCARIOT DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF: A STORY IN FRAGMENTS by James S.A.Corey 

Straczynski says this is “the most dangerous of all.” Pretty damn close. What would humanity become if we could switch bodies? Is utopia possible? What would it do to taboos? Didn’t quite blow my mind, but then, I’m me.

Whew! There they are, all the stories. Oddly enough, I still have things to say, so next time I’ll discuss the Afterword, and few other things . . .

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