Chicanonautica: Welcome to NEO-Laredo

by Ernest Hogan

I was caught off guard. The comics-style cover, by William Keops Ibañez, author of the comic book series Blazing Quantum True Tales from La Frontera, and the mentions of President Ronald Drumpf (AKA King Gringo), the Wall, and the United Confederate States of America gave me the impression that I was in for some vicious satire. I was wrong, and it was a good thing. Satirizing the former President of the United States of America has proved to be futile. He is immune to it, being too ridiculous to be caricatured. Reporting accurately about him is difficult, because the nature of journalism, taking the facts and assembling them into a coherent story, has the unfortunate side-effect of making him seem more intelligent than he really is.

No, in NEO-Laredo, Mario E. Martinez creates a grim dystopia, a world created by the ghastly administration. Not the sort of commercial stereotyped Young Adult bubble gum dystopia that has been popular in the last decade–not a safe place where the oppression is mild and the rebellion is a backdrop for teenage romance. What we have instead is a tale of a harsh new reality–a Laredo that is NEO. The sealed border makes polarization go wild. A newly supercharged Chicanoid counterculture fights for survival while being swept into the larger conflict, guerrilla warfare against psychic oppressors. 

 

It's not fun and games, but gritty--full of fear, loathing, blood, and sacrifice. And not a simplistic shoot ‘em up. We have fascinating characters, conflicts within conflicts, and in the end it turns out that the struggle has just begun. A long, hard slog, so to speak.

So why do a slick self-publication (the big publishers, especially those specializing in spec fic, aren’t interested in this kind of stuff, I know from personal experience) of a book like this in 2021? Because it could still happen. The Trump nightmare is refusing to die. Opposing realities are slugging it out. We need more visions of the future, to struggle for and against.

Science fiction, despite its leanings toward escapism, is part of the battle for the kind of future we’re all going to end up living in.

We also need our preconceived notion to be shattered on a regular basis.

Especially between now and 2024.

So, buy NEO-Lardeo, and read it before you find yourself living it. And vote for the future of your choice.

Ernest Hogan is the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, the author of High Aztech. His latest writing can be found in the Chicano anthology El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl, and Latinx anthology Speculative Fiction for Dreamers.