Chicanonautica: The LOM Recombocultural Wild Ride Continues

by Ernest Hogan

So, here we are in a new year, trapped in the fetal stage of Trumptopia, taking in the news like Odysseus lashed to the mast hearing the song of the Sirens, torn between a brain hemorrhage and going mad. Some serious escapism is in order; not some tepid fantasy of a safe place where everyone speaks English, and has skin the color of alabaster, and wears pretty, intricate clothing. How about something action-packed that challenges your notions of civilization and reality?

LOM by Frank S. Lechuga is just the thing! LOM Book Two is out, and just the thing to read in the current maelstrom of political turmoil.

I re-read Book One in preparation for Book Two. I recommend that approach.You’re going to want the full effect.

I hope it stays legal.

LOM Book One is a high-speed launch into a brave new world straight out or Eastlos, Carlos Casteneda, and Hwrang Do that rides on new technologies, exploring inner/outer/corner spaces, and leaving you drooling for more.

LOM Book Two maintains speed and keeps going into new territory, including issues of identity and a fracturing, dystopian society’s method of dealing with with it. An Aztlan nationalist group even shows up, making the story especially relevant. Futuropulp/exploitation- style action is infiltrated by the strange fruit of the “SOCIOPOLITICAL SEEDS” that Lechuga mentioned in the afterward of the first book.

Just in time to mesh with the current real-life political situation, the hero learns the truth about his past, changes his name, and undergoes a new kind of enlightenment as technoshamanism intrudes into the high-tech/shoot ‘em up, causing it to take on a new dimension.

In a feat worthy of a cyberpunk master, without slowing the breakneck pace, Lechuga shifts from the blood, guts, and crashing vehicles -- and yes, there’s sex, too -- into lengthy, and quite necessary info dumps that together explain this intricate future as well as laying the foundation for a new warrior spirituality. I was amazed. Few writers can manage to pull off such a thing.

It’s also great to see the tech and the spirit plugged into each other. I know that this doesn’t seem unusual to the younger generation, but I’m old enough to remember the primitive days when technology and spirituality were thought to be incompatible opposites. Glad those days are over. The future will be better for it.

And the revelation that provides a climax for this volume is not the end of the story. I was left eager to find out what happens next. Luckily, there are two more books to go.

Ernest Hogan is adjusting to our new dystopian reality, and is contemplating creative mayhem.