Chicanonautica: Not Ready for Dead Daze 2017

by Ernest Hogan 

So here we are, hurtling toward the end of October in the Year of the Alien God 2017.

It’s also the first year of Trumptopia--wonder if we’ll eventually get a new calendar for that, or will mutilating the old one be all we have do? 

Mutilation . . .Transformation . . . The new realities always come with pain.

Sacrifices must be made.

Anyway, Dead Daze is just around the corner, and I’m not ready.

For those of you are wondering, “What the hell is Dead Daze?” It’s a stringing together of Halloween and the Days of the Dead (yes, that’s plural, there are two Dias de Los Muertos, cabrones!)  into a three-day celebration. It hasn't caught on yet, but sometimes these things take time.

There are those who don’t want to see electric jack-o-lanterns and plastic sugar skulls together, but for me Halloween has always been a Mexican kind of thing. One of my fondest East L.A. memories is of my first Halloween, back in the antediluvian nineteen fifties, with me in a Superman costume that my mother made, and the streets full Chicanos and Chicanas, towering over me, dressed as all kinds of monsters.

I introduced Dead Daze in my novel Smoking Mirror Blues. If you haven’t read it, Strange Particle Press has started work on a new edition. If you can't wait, copies of the first edition from Wordcraft of Oregon can still be had. My self-published ebook will also be available for a while.

It’s also the end of Hispanic/Latino culture month. The only thing I “did” was see copies of Latin@Rising used in a display in the library where I work. But then I celebrate and participate in La Culture every month of the year.

Like the story I’m finishing up where Aztlán has seceded from the U.S.A.--not that I think it should happen, but the thought experiment may stir up the sort of thinking that should come in handy as we build the future. El Presidente is trying to build his vision of a walled tomorrow, so why not suggest some alternatives?

It’s for a new Latinx SF/F anthology. Yes, another one.

No wonder I’m so busy. Recombocultural futurism is breaking out all over. Ideas are returning to science fiction, even in TV shows. Amid the global turmoil, new cultures are manifesting.

It's a lot better than back when the Book of Revelations and the zombie apocalypse were America's most popular visions of the future.

There's a lot for a humble Chicano sci-fi writer to do.

I don't have time to celebrate holidays. Or even remember them.

So there's no ofrendas for dead loved ones at my house. I'll have to remember them as my wife and I watch our favorite horror movies . . . if we can find the time.

Ernest Hogan wrote Smoking Mirror Blues after Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec warrior/trickster god, whispered the idea into his ear. Has Tezcatlipoca been whispering into El Presidente's ear?