by
Ernest Hogan
The
plane took off from Phoenix and entered a white void. It cleared up
as we reached San Diego. Once again California looked Martian, with a
smoky haze creeping through the mountains from the north, where the
Camp Fire blazed.
I
hadn’t been to San Diego in decades. Back in the Eighties, when I
crossed the burning desert for my love, I thought S.D. was cheesy,
and laughed when Phoenix radio stations would offer all-expense paid
trips there as prizes. Now I was going there, on an all-expense trip being paid for by San Diego State University.
William
Nericcio had invited me to come talk to the students of his English
220 class, Robotic Erotic Electric,
in which he was teaching my novel High Aztech,
along with works by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Franz Kafka,
Philip K. Dick, and Haruki Murakami.
None
of the doom-struck weirdness was visible when I arrived in the city
where streets go right to the Pacific Ocean. The town had developed
into a nice-looking place--hipsteroid with Latino accents--and hints
of human recomboculture.
La
Pensione Hotel was right next to their Little Italy, and interesting
signage, street art, and murals were visible. India Street was crowded
with Italian restaurants, and the air made my mouth water. Most of
these places were quiet, fancy joints with white tablecloths, high
prices, and menus I couldn’t decipher, but then I found Filippi’s
Pizza Grotto, a noisy place that you entered through an old-fashioned
Italian grocery store. I gobbled a heaping plate of spaghetti sausage
and
a
fist-sized meatball under the gaze of the cornucopia-wielding woman
painted over the busy kitchen.
The
next morning, Good Morning San Diego told of the migrant caravans
arriving in Tijuana, and incidents of violence and unrest, making it
seem like all hell was about break loose, but the big worry was who
to pay for it all.
We
had some time before the class, so William Nericcio took me to
Chicano Park--I was hoping that would be possible, Tezcatlipoca
willing and the ocean don’t rise. I took photos of a lot, but not
all, of the murals--guess I’ll have go back sometime. Nericcio got
shots of me in the park, that would make great author photos.
 |
| Photo: William Nericcio |
People
in military uniforms were on the SDSU campus. Its was either another
event, or they were there to protect the university from the
fires/approaching migrant caravans. They were unarmed, so it was
probably the former. I think.
The
poster for the class called me a “Science Fiction Author Legend.”
All I had to do was live up to that.
Finally,
I was in front of a room filled with over two hundred students.
Mostly youngsters, but there was the obligatory, white-haired,
old-school, science fiction fan in the front row. I started by
introducing myself, and reading the humanoid tacos scene from the
novel, then threw it open to questions. That ate up most of the
seventy minutes. They had plenty of questions, and afterwards, there
was a long line of folks who wanted me to autograph their copies. A
lot of them told how much they enjoyed it.
That
was such a relief after those years of being told that no one was
buying or understanding it.
I
think it’s made it from obscure cult novel to classic. Why not? In
our times, a novel that anyone still gives a damn about twenty years
after its first publication is a classic.
Maybe
someday, I’ll be wearing a baseball cap, driving my peekop across
Phoenix, and hear El
Corrido del Padre de la Ciencia Ficción Chicana
on
Radio Campesina . . .
Ernest Hogan is trying to relax and make plans to astound the world in
2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment