Chicanonautica: HighAztechization

by Ernest Hogan

I was not trying to predict the future when I wrote High Aztech. I was just trying to make sense out of the insane developments I saw in the world around me. Now, over thirty years later, I keep seeing news items that show how the world is becoming more and more like my novel:

In a recent poll, 54% of Mexico City residents said they were in favor of changing the city’s name back to Tenochtitlán, “to better embrace its indigenous identity.” It was a non-binding resolution, but still, that’s a majority.

 

 

Across the Border, in California, Aztlán Development, “a group based in Palm Springs made up of architects and developers specializing in theme parks,” announced their plans for Return to Aztlán, a 48-acre theme park with concert plaza, a beach amphitheater, and “a 16-screen movie theatre in the shape of a Mayan temple.” (Er, Mayan?) There will also be a 200-foot-tall pyramid based on Tenochtitán’s Templo Mayor where visitors will be able to take glass elevators to an observation deck giving panoramic views of the Coachella Valley. Then they can ride down the water slides.

Kinda boggles the mind, though a follow up story says it ain’t gonna happen, and “The ‘news’ came as news to the developers themselves — as well as local tribes and Coachella city officials.”

Looks like Tezcatlipoca is up to his tricksterizations again.

I am reminded of Jesús Salvador Treviño’s “The Great Pyramid of Aztlán” where a pyramid is built in Arizona as the result of Chicano nationalism and capitalism that creates a world much saner and preferable to my dystopian vision. You can read Treviño’s story in The Fabulous Sinkhole and Other Stories.

If that wasn’t strange enough, there’s a controversy about reviving Aztec religion in California. Some folks are objecting to the California Department of Education’s  Ethnic Studies Curriculum accusing Christians of “theocide” (apparently they don’t know about what happened to native religions in America in the last 500 years), and objecting to the study of Aztec beliefs, including chants to Aztec gods. An article in City Journal expressed fear that this will result in “the displacement of the Christian god, which is said to be an extension of white supremacist oppression, and the restoration of the indigenous gods to their rightful place in the social justice cosmology.” National Review goes even further, comparing the curriculum to “the stone altar that once stood at the top of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan”; “many of our children will be sacrificed on it if we accord the cult it serves more respect and more tolerance than it rightly deserves.” 

So, no freedom of religion for Aztecs? I don’t recall a Christians Only clause in the Constitution . . .

Both articles use sensationalistic descriptions of gory sacrifices to scare their presumably Christian readers. Be sure to listen to the audio of the National Review piece; the attempts to pronounce the Nahuatl names are hilarious.

I wonder if these folks have heard of High Aztech?

Meanwhile, my social media feeds are full of posts from people who are doing their part to revive Aztec and other PreColumbian cultures, including the religions. No reports or images of bloody sacrifices. Mostly art and poetry. Flower and song. The parts of our ancient cultures the haters never mention.

Guess I was right to title my upcoming story, “Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice have Been GreatlyExaggerated.”

Ernest Hogan is the Father of Chicano Science Fiction and has a close personal relationship with Tezcatlipoca.

Chicanonautica: American Dirty Secrets About Publishing

by Ernest Hogan

I started writing this as the American Dirt pendejada raged , giving impeachment and the coronavirus some serious competition. What’s with these death threats? What do we expect, attacks by vatos locos with obsidian blades and blowguns?

Since then,  #DignidadLiteraria  (Myriam Gruba, David Bowles, and Roberto Lovato) met with Flatiron Books/Macmillan. The publisher promised to “try to be less white.” Also, it was confirmed that Jeanine Cummins DID NOT RECEIVE DEATH THREATS . . .

Now my problem is to come up with stuff that hasn't done to death by the time this goes live. Luckily, being a long-time Chicano writer who worked for ten years for the corporate bookstore chain, Borders (awk! Am I going to have to explain what it was?), I've got some inside information that may help define this mess.

They won’t admit it, and cry if you accuse them of racism, but the Nueva York-based publishing industry thinks that books are a white people thing. Even in the futuristic year of 2020, when they see a writer or story that isn’t of the demographic of this planet’s English-speaking, Caucasian minority, they panic in fear of losing money. They are so sure that “the audience” won’t buy such things.

So if they want to sell the plight of folks who need to cross the border to the Oprah Book Club audience (which are almost exclusively middle class white ladies), they have to get an unthreatening, sorta Latina gal to do some research and come up with something that they can pimp the hell out of, while they keep on ignoring all of us Latinx (-oid, whatever) writers who have been writing lots of material about this subject for years. I could walk around my house and assemble an impressive pile of such books.

Yeah, I know, they aren’t “bestsellers”--that genre unto itself that are designed to be easy to read, and never quite take “the audience” out if its safe zone. But now and then they need to feel smart, they go for Oprah-type offerings that titillate but never go too far.

Also, the whole “bestseller” business is a fraud. It’s rare that a book comes out of nowhere, makes the lists and sells big. Usually, it’s decided which books are going to be “bestsellers” in advance. There’s advance media hype, a book tour is planned. The publishers pay the bookstores to display the books as “bestsellers.”

No matter how many times I’ve tried to tell this, book lovers don’t want to believe it, but I’ve unpacked the books, and put up the displays myself.

What’s really interesting is what usually happens afterwards. Most of these expensive hardcovers with discount stickers on them, don’t sell. After sitting there for a few weeks, the stickers get torn off, and the books are moved back to shelves, where they mostly sit until they are sent back for credit. Bookstores generate a lot of income through returns. And eventually, the books end up in the dumpster and the landfill.

A helluvalota money is wasted.

When I sold my first novel, Cortez on Jupiter, because of my name, the publisher assumed that I was an Anglo who did research on Chicanos. I was asked if I was willing to use a “slightly Hispanic” pseudonym. When I told them I was a Chicano, they started to act weird.

They sabotaged my  second book. The only ad had a blank space instead of text. No review copies were sent out even though my first book had a lot of good reviews. When I tried to get copies for a book signing, I was told that they had no copies left; when my agent asked if they were going to do a second printing, they said they didn’t sell, they were just, er . . . gone! For years I got royalty statements that claimed that practically no copies sold, but huge caches were being unearthed and returned for credit.

 

And somehow, High Aztech has acquired a reputation as a classic, and is discussed and taught at universities, nearly thirty years after its first publication.

I can understand these big-time publishers wanting to make money. I want to make money, too. It would be great if we could do it together.

And I can’t help but wonder how much money we would have made if they hadn’t treated me like the most talented leper they ever met.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is alive and well in the literary underground, where he keeps one foot, so that when the shit hits the fan, he’ll have a place to stand.

Chicanonautica: Talking High Aztech in San Diego

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.

Interview of Ernest Hogan

Interview of Ernest Hogan

by Xánath Caraza

Ernest Hogan is the author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter. Those novels, along with his short fiction have won him the reputation of being the Father of Chicano Science Fiction. His mother’s maiden name is Garcia, he was born in East L.A., and has been called the n-word many, many times over the years. His work has appeared in Amazing Stories, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and other magazines and anthologies.

Who is Ernest Hogan? 

Damn good question! I’m actually too busy to think much about it. Too busy being it, whatever it is. I’m not to be confused with Ernest Hogan, the Father of Ragtime, but since he’s been dead for over a century, it shouldn’t be hard. As for defining myself as a writer, I seem to be stuck in the science fiction category because most of the publications willing to run my work have that genre’s name as part of the title, and there isn’t really any viable market for the gonzoid surrealistic stuff I do when not playing sci-fiista. The literary and corporate worlds tend to cringe in horror at my vulgarity and rasquache. It hasn’t been lucrative, but I can’t seem to stop, and some people enjoy it.

As a child, who first introduced you to reading?  Who guided you through your first readings? 

It’s all my parents’ fault. Dad always was reading something. He and my mom had books and all kinds of magazines all over the house. They encouraged our reading. I found it a great alternative to most of dull stuff on television. They also didn’t mind when I found weird stuff and brought it home.

How did you first become a writer?  Where were your first short stories written?

Reading was actually difficult for me at first. Dyslexia. (Did I spell it right?) Then I discovered comic books, and there was no stopping me. Since I was lousy at math, becoming a mad scientist was out of the question, so I decided to take advantage of my grotesquely overactive imagination and write. Especially after a teacher showed The Story of a Writer, a documentary about Ray Bradbury. I thought, “Yeah, I could do that.” Then my parents got me a typewriter to do my homework on, and started writing. My first publication was a letter in a comic book—I was hooked. From my typewriter to comic book racks all more the country, and before the Internet! This was in West Covina, California.

Do you have any favorite short story by other authors?  Could you share some lines along with your reflection of what drew you toward that short story?

Lately (I keep changing my mind about these things) I’ve been telling people “I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg” by Robert Sheckley and Harlan Ellison. It was way ahead of its time—postcyberpunk back in the Sixties—and one of the first time I encountered what I like to do in my writing, which is throw around ideas, and create a volatile mix that seems to take on a life of its own before the reader’s eyes. It’s wild, crazy, fun, and gets you thinking about hey, what the hell’s the world coming to? It’s also a great example of a story that came from writers interacting with the world, and each other, which I believe is the way the imagination works best, rather than contemplating your navel in a dark, quiet room.

What is a day of creative writing like for you?

I’d love to just get up, and start plugging away on the latest project after breakfast/checking email/Facebook/Twitter, but my life is just too complicated. I’ve learned get used to being interrupted—the phone rings, the dog barks, email demands immediate attention, were those gunshots or firecrackers? Long hours at the computer don’t seem to happen, especially when you have a day job. I’ve also learned to write on the run. I used to use little notebooks, but in the last few years have been using an iTouch and Google Drive so I can work just about anywhere. Most of I’ve written recently was typed with one finger in the breakroom of the Cholla branch of the Phoenix Public Library. A real writer finds a way, no matter what the situation.

When do you know when a text is ready to be read? 

About the time I get tired of working on it. I also don’t consider a piece of writing to be finished until it’s been published and read, which of course can be a long, twisted road. Then after it’s published, you can see things that need changing, or you just plain changed your mind.

Could you describe your activities as writer?

Mostly, it the usual, writing, finding markets. I’m lucky in that since I have a reputation, they often come looking for me. Most of my short story sales from the last decade have come from answering email. I really should send things to more markets more often, but my career seems to do things on its own.

 

Could you comment on your life as a cultural activist?

Sometimes life forces you into the role of a cultural activist. What I started writing, I didn’t think my ethnicity would be an issue, but it turns out that the publishing industry, even though they won’t come out and admit it, believes that books, and culture in general, are a white people thing, and get nervous when people like me write about people that they don’t fit into their stereotypical visions of their audience. Yeah, times are changing, but it’s a slow and painful process. New York still won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole, but then that’s probably a good thing, because I’m writing what I want instead of beating myself bloody trying to create a “bestseller.” My showing up—or just existing—causes controversy. Since I’m not giving up, the world has no choice but to change.

What project/s are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on one of the novels I’d like to finish before I die (I’m getting old), Zyx, Or; Bring Me The Brain of Victor Theremin, a slapstick comedy about the Singularity starring my literary alter ego. And thinking about my first story collection. I’m also planning an art project, a temporary mural, for the library where I work (Did I mention that I’m also an artist?)

What advice do you have for other writers?

Way back in the Seventies, in a Creative Writing class, the teacher said, “If we’re lucky, one person in this room will get published.” Guess it was me. I didn’t give up. And I also probably wanted to be a writer more than the others. I have made sacrifices, as my Aztec ancestors have taught me. And don’t give up. Also, don’t be a snob. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Be prepared to change your definition of success.

What else would you like to share?

Buy Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport, because a rich wife can come in handy. I will be judging the First Annual Somos en escrito Extra-Fiction Writing Contest 2018 for Somos en escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine (deadline for entries is September 30). And an anthology I contributed to, Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Pop Culture has just won the American Book Award.

http://www.somosenescrito.com/2018/06/extra-fiction-writing-contest-2018.html