Spic vs spec - 1. Chicanos/latinos & sci-fi lit

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

For varied reasons, when I was growing up in San Anto, one thing set our home off from the others--we read science fiction. My father--the cabrón--assumedly was the precursor of this, though I can't say about my abuelos. The reading of sci-fi (yeah, I know some authors hate the term) continued long after we kicked el cabrón bruto's ass out of the house and began a semi-nomadic life through shanties and the projects. I kept the tradition alive.

I remember when and how I acquired the bug, the one time our sire read us a short story called The Rag Thing. Me and the others were all curled up in the bed with him and listening to this crazy dishrag that turned into a monster and ate the whole town. Actually, the cabrón stopped before the ending and never finished it for us. But we wanted to know how it turned out, so I became the reader from my siblings. Among other genres, I continue reading sci-fi to this day.

At some point in the past I decided to try mi pluma at getting something published. It finally happened this year when cyberpunk founder Rudy Rucker, Sr. accepted the story Last Call for Ice Cream on his personal webzine at Flurb.net.

Here's how Rucker described it:
"Rudy Garcia’s Last Call for Ice Cream is a hypnotic stew of spanglo slanguage, wry and funny, with a special surprise in every sentence, and a renegade view of life in these United States."

Now, when Rudy Rucker likes one of your stories, in the sci-fi world that's a gigantic plus. When your story is rife with "spanglo slanguage," it's a bigger deal because we know how hard it is for the mainstream lit world to accept "latino lit."

El cabrón is dead and can't read the story and there's no doubt some Freudian slivers to this whole thing in my life and this post, but let's set that aside.

When I read the following review of my story, I got surprised, and, sure, offended somewhat:

"The issue ends with Last Call for Ice Cream by Rudy Ch. Garcia, a rambling piece about a guy trying to write a vidscript. It has so much slang that it becomes tiresome very quickly." [by Sam Tomaino]

I guess Tomaino didn't like it much, though I don't know if the slang he refers to is the spanglo slanguage or the English terms I invented. Not to accuse him of monolinguistic prejudice, I put the vato's critique into the realm of no le cai, because to some people maybe the story is "tiresome."

The incident got my brain clicking, wanting to explore some old questions in new ways.

Do Chicanos/latinos read sci-fi? How much, how many? Why don't more? How many are writing sci-fi? Should more latinos be writing it? Why don't we have a bronce version of the Black Science Fiction Society or afroamerican sci-fi mags? Is there some significance to the answer of any of these?

Consider this only the beginning of a series to explore these and other questions that I haven't imagined. I welcome input from anyone--writers, readers, non-latinos, aliens--to see what new directions we might give the topic.

And if you want to add the either side of the critique of my first accepted sci-fi story, make certain you mention Garcia or Rucker, depending on which Rudy you're referring to.

This series continues here.

Es todo, hoy
RudyG

Chicanonautica: The Xuanito Syndrome

by Ernest Hogan

Not satisfied with the turmoil caused by his publication of “Doctora Xilbabla’s Datura Enema,” Rudy Rucker has chosen to include another story of mine in Issue #12, Fall-Winter, 2011 of Flurb: A Webzine of Astonishing Tales.

That’s right, it’s a webzine, available online, for free, to any unsuspecting soul with net access. With one click, you could find yourself reading a new collaboration between Rudy and Paul Di Filippo, and new stories by Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and other talented folks. There’s also an assault on civilized sensibilities by me, called, “Xuanito.”

Just a name for a title, in the tradition of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Godzilla.

“Xuanito” is a tribute to a major influence on my work (and my personality) -- the monster movie. I grew up watching them on shows like L.A.'s KHJ-TV, Channel 9’s Strange Tales of Science Fiction. They weren’t just products out of Hollywood. Monster movies came from Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, Denmark, Italy, even England. Monsters shaped my world.

At first I has horrified by the genre, but I found it irresistible. I went from having nightmares about monsters coming after me to fantasizing about being one of the heroic guys who killed the monsters. Then, things took a weird turn -- at some point I started to identify with the monsters.

I’m not sure when this happened. It may have had something to do with hormones kicking in. It was also the Sixties . . .

Rudy noticed what he calls transreal stuff about the way young Latinos get treated in “Xuanito.” That was what I intended. I have noticed that often, when I’m minding my own business, pursuing my interests and curiosities, the prevailing society reacts as if I was one of the rubber-suit creatures from my favorite movies. Fair-skinned, English-speakers have reacted with terror and looked like they were about to call for uniformed back-up when I just was out looking for a job or something. Luckily, I developed an attitude and a sense of humor that defuses the situation before excessive force is authorized.

This has caused me to realize that the Chicano Taking On The World is a recurring theme with me. Cortez on Jupiter is a portrait of an artist as a young monster. High Aztech reanimated Aztec culture and turned it loose on an unsuspecting world. Smoking Mirror Blues has a barrio mad scientist making himself into Tezcatlipoca. And here, in my last Chicanonautica, I refered to myself as a Frankenstein monster.

Yeah, I’m working on those ebooks . . .

And I’m thinking about the Chicano as a Menace to Society and an Information Age Monster. There are probably more stories lurking in that syndrome.

Ernest Hogan’s story “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song,” can now be pre-ordered in the anthology Alien Contact by Marty Halpern.