Chicanonautica: A Chicanonaut at the Intersection of Afrofuturism and Cyberpunk

by Ernest Hogan

I’m going to a science fiction convention this weekend, so I have to practice my self-promotion. My career has a life of its own, and keeps getting out of control. When people ask me what’s going on I often have to check on my blog to see.

Ay, maybe I should make a cheat sheet . . .

Let’s see, High Aztech is being formatted to be an ebook as I type this . . .

I just signed a contract for my story “Skin Dragons Talk” -- a tale of yakuza and illegal aliens on the Moon -- to appear in the anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond.

I get called a cyberpunk, but I like to say that I am not now nor have ever been a card-carrying cyberpunk. My recombocultural Chicanonautica actually is closer to Afrofuturism. Thomas Foster makes this connection in his book The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumansim as Vernacular Theory, mentioning the influence of Ishmael Reed on High Aztech.

Admittedly, I was doing cyberpunk riffs in my futuro lucha libre/weaponized chili story “Novaheads” that will appear in Super Stories of Heroes and Villains. I also created a newfangled Chicano superhero in the process.

“Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus” will appear in the decolonialist anthology We See a Different Frontier. I’m not sure if I’m being post- or anti-steampunk with this romp in an alternative universe Mexican Revolution with airships, death rays, and an assault on Hollywood.

I guess the same old corporate sci-fi just doesn’t do it for me. I want to meddle in things . . .

Ernest Hogan is the author of the underground cult classic High Aztech, that will soon be available as an ebook. It may have mind-altering side effects. Do not try to drive motor vehicles or operate heavy machinery while reading it.