Chicanonautica: Gonzo Writing On-The-Run Diary

 by Ernest Hogan

One thing I do when I teach my class for Palabras del Pueblo is write a story. The first day I gather some material, usually from the conversation, get an idea, and by the final day I have a story. What better way to share my writing process than to be doing it?

This time getting an idea was easy. In their opening presentation E.L. and Ronnie Dukes had us all do a writing exercise about getting a text from yourself from the year 2070. I tend to have doubts about such things, and scribbled some unusable gibberish, but the prompt got my diabolical imagination going. 

I’m old and will be 115 in 2070. Maybe it would be better if it was about a younger guy. Ronnie had us do a drawing exercise, so I drew what I would look like. A lot of my characters start out as me, then get off on their own.

To further complicate things, in the week between the Palabras weekends Emily and I had planned to do a three-day getaway from the killer heat of the Metro Phoenix Area. I was going to have to write the story on the run. Gonzo!

I decided to keep a diary of the story. And share it with my students. 

Of course, I’ve done some revising, correcting, and rewriting first:

That night, after midnight, a brainstorm woke me up. One of my brainstorms is literally like a lightning storm in my head. I took notes: mental health . . . Robots . . . Franchises . .  . Dying . .   Drones like giant mosquitoes . .  . Taser-headed robot dogs . .  . Like rough, unpolished poetry. Fragments hung on an awkward, jagged framework.

Then I had a dream of running up and down rocky hills on the way to a protest. 

It came in no kind of order. Gonzo information gathering. Cook the rasquache scramble into mutant huevos rancheros later. Like cubism. Sometimes I compose stories like Hieronymus Bosch, Diego Rivera, or S. Clay Wilson.

I didn’t get enough sleep, so I had to gonzo it with caffeine and antihistamines. My days of abusing caffeine to almost hallucinogenic levels are long behind me, but I’ve found that when I do need a boost, a little dab will do me. The muses (Xochiquetzal included) don’t give a damn about your schedules and obligations.

Also, Google was getting glitchy. I copied the stuff from the Drive file to my sketchbook in case I couldn’t access it. Keep your analog. You might need it!

After a first thing in the morning line, I made some decisions: The world is ours, right now–only worse. I still had no face on the main character, but he was younger than me, and a chronically unemployed recent college grad.

Then I decided not to think about it for the rest of the day, concentrate on the class, let the riders in the backseat of my brain work on it.

Later I re-read what I had from the beginning. I’ve found that's a good way to get back into it, and a chance to make changes and corrections.

I named the character Tavo and incorporated stuff from Ernesto Mireles’ talk–about the grim future of Chicano studies. I also decided to change the sex of a minor character because there were no women so far.

Next morning I did the sex change, thought about rearranging things. Let it stew.

I also had to go to my day job. It’s always interesting to go to work with an embryonic story growing in your brain. Kinda like drugs.

The next day Emily and I went on our road trip. As usual, I take a sketchbook/notebook. I do what I call cherchez le weird. I get a lot of my crazy ideas that way.

At one point, we got a flat tire. I took the following notes while waiting for AAA to rescue us:

[KEEP CHANGING MY MIND ABOUT THINGS I WANT TO REARRANGE & LEAVE OUT OF THE STORY. THERE IS STILL TIME TO WAFFLE . . .]

[SHOULD THERE BE MORE PEOPLE ON THE TRAIN?}

[THE PROTESTORS / RIOTERS - WHO ARE THEY?]

[WHEN THE TRAIN STOPS, IT IS NEXT TO AN ABANDONED SHOPPING MALL. TAVO RUNS INTO A NEARBY NEIGHBORHOOD, WORRYING ABOUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN, WILL THEY COME AFTER HIM?]

[TAVO THROWS A ROCK AT A ROBODOG. PROTESTERS CHEER]

[HE FLIPS OFF A DRONE]

[IN THE END, HIS PHONE RINGS AGAIN, WE GET THE “HERE WE GO AGAIN.” SUGGEST OLD TAVO IS IN A SIMILAR SITUATION.]

And the folks at Enterprise switched us to another car, getting us back to running around, having fun in record time.

The next day, while reposting the new Chicanonautica about my preparations for the class, I realized that its main purpose is triggering creativity rather than instruction. I am not an academic. I’ve never been comfortable in a classroom. I set out to deliberately be non-academic. If I can get to students to experience creativity, I consider it a success.

Later, I had a beer with dinner (a Corona lager) and a couple of chocolates from a Whisky Row shop that contained alcohol. I usually do my writing after dinner while traveling, so I decided to experiment with gonzo writing under the influence . . . I wrote my usual rough draft with one finger on my phone. The booze didn’t slow me down, but then I’m a professional who’s been publishing since 1982.

I even got to the end of the story.

Of course, I was not finished. Lots of people go on social media at this point and cheer about being “done.” No, this is not the end. What you have now is a creative mess. This is where the real work begins, the pick-and-shovel stuff. The gonzo frolicking is over. Switch over the other side of the brain, engage critical thinking, get into editor mode—Dr. Jekyll instead of Mr. Hyde.

It’s the part of writing you don’t hear much about, except for impassioned bitching.

The next morning there was no need for a warmup sentence/paragraph.

I felt that the ending needed something. Things kept occurring to me. After thoughts and second guessing. Stuff bubbling in the depths of my brain. I let it. Then worked on making it ready for an editor.

The rest of the day I concentrated on having fun.

Ernest Hogan will be teaching again at the Fall Palabras del Pueblo workshop. Meanwhile, he will be committing random acts of Xicanxfuturism, and wonder what the world will be like in a few months.

Chicanonautica: Whatchcallus, Anyway?

by Ernest Hogan

I did a display of science fiction by writers of what I call the Latinoid Continuum and I used the term Latinx. There will probably be objections from some of my peers, so here’s an explanation:

The sign is for the patrons of that library where I work, and while we get my fellow Chicanos here, we also get a lot of others, African Americans, “whites,” et cetera. . . It’s in a public place and as inclusive as possible.

Also, not all of the writers featured are, if you want to get nick-picky, Chicanos. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is Mexico born and lives in Canada. V. Castro is a Tejana who lives in England.  Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology includes “Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” one of my best stories, along with “Old Folks” by Scótt Russell Dúncan (note the accent marks–should I do it too? Érnest Hógan . . .) editor for Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow–Codex I (out now, buy it, read it, live it) and works by a diverse crew of writers from cultures transmogrified by contact with the Spanish Armada.

The x is still esoteric and controversial and not really known outside of college campuses and bureaucracies, but I consider exposing people to things from outside their comfort zone part of my job.

Once near the ruins of Monte Alban, I identified myself as a Chicano to a Zapotec guide. He had never heard the word. I tried to explain, but ended up leaving him thinking I was from Chicago.

In my career, I’ve found that it helps to use words that outsiders—Anglos (some take offense, “I ain’t from Angola!”), gringos, (et and cetera)— can understand. When dealing with more than one culture, declaring an official name never works. What usually happens, quite organically, is new languages are created.

New life and new civilizations. Chicanidad evolving into Xicanxfuturism. Talk about a concept that could cause trouble. 

The word Yucatan is based on one of the many Mayan dialects for “I don’t understand you.”

I’ve never been picky about what people call me. The internet thinks I’m a cyberpunk, though I’ve never been part of the movement. People have a hard time figuring me out, so I let them slap a handy label on me and go on with my business. These labels are usually insults or place-holders for something they don’t understand.

So what? Political correctness is for losers and I’m  a bizarre phenomenon. I’m lucky they don’t call in the military.

You usually don’t get called what you choose, you get called what your enemies call you, if they win, that is . . .

Chicano started out as a vile insult. Like the N-word.

The Navajo call themselves the Diné. The many Apache tribes call themselves variations on Ndé, Ndee, N’de or even Diné. Yes, they are related, but then aren’t we all? 

 

Do you have Neanderthal or Denisovian DNA? Or both?

Navajo and Apache are Spanishized versions of Zuni and Tewa Pueblo words for “enemy” and “cultivated fields in the valley” as in  apachu from the navahu’u.

We all call the Kanien’kehá:ka the Mohawks, a Dutch/English version of the Algonquian mohowawog, “man-eater,” cannibal, if you will.

So rather than arguing about what we should be called and what language we should be arguing in we need to form a united front. But first there will be a lot of fighting about it.

Meanwhile, I’m using Latinoid Continuum . . . 

ICE can’t tell Mexicans from Chicanos from Latinos from Latinx from Xicanx from brown from black from white. And a warehouse is being converted into a “detention center” not far from where I live. 

New languages, and realities, will be created in the process. 

Xicanxfuturism is the future!

Or as Jean-Luc Godard’s evil computer Alpha-60 said in Alphaville:  “Sometimes reality can be too complex to be conveyed by the spoken word. Legend remolds it into a form that can be spread all across the world.” 

See? Chicano really is a science fiction state of being.

Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction, wants you to buy Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I, read it, and start building the rasquache future of our choice. His Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars story “A Wild and Wooly Road Trip on Mars” will be in Codex II, soon . . . 

 

Chicanonautica: Who the Hell is Paco Cohen?

by Ernest Hogan

 

It’s like I don’t as much create characters as meet them. It was that way with Paco Cohen.

I was working as a janitor, sweeping out classrooms and cleaning toilets at an elementary school. I wore a baseball cap and a bandana. Just another Chicano janitor.

I was still a sci-fi writer at heart, thinking about Mars, because Phoenix seems so much like a Mars colony to me. I started getting these flashes of a guy like me on Mars . . .

They weren’t very clear at first. I needed to experience some things before I could write this story. While doing the job, I soaked up the way I was treated and people reacted to me. 

I learned a lot from my Chicano—actually, most of them were Chicanas—coworkers, learning about their lives and the important part Mexican music played. They grew up, worked, and fell in love to this soundtrack.

Eventually, Paco came into focus, and began talking to me.

It wasn’t easy, like picking up a signal from a distant world. I had to tap into feelings about my down-but-not out writing career. Paco’s life was similar.

Soon I was telling people, “He’s gonna say stuff like, My mama would say, ‘Mijo, don’t be a yutz!”

And people would say,”You’ve got to write that!”

The result was the novelette “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars.” The story of a man who was crucified on a vampire cactus by an interplanetary development corporation, then patched himself back together. The corporate take-over of Mars from a point of view of a guy who has to wipe the red dust off everything. Chicano stuff. I was amazed when it sold to Analog, the magazine that first serialized Dune.

I wasn’t thinking of sequels or franchises, but Paco wasn’t done with me. What would this Mars, and Paco’s life be like with the corporation versus the Chicano-style rasquache lifestyle of the workers, and the awakening of ancient Martian lifeforms. The result was "Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” (the bilingual glitch on purpose, a nod to “the Los Angeles Times” and other artifacts of my SoCal upbringing) that also sold to Analog.

Would I be able to find success by pretending to be a venerable “hard science” writer?

 

It didn’t happen. By the time I wrote “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails,” I had been told that what I have been sending Analog was “too surrealistic and cartoony” (my writing described in a nutshell). I couldn’t help it–that’s the way Paco’s life–and mine–went. This one was about how and why he got from Texas to Mars, and his youth as a rocking young rebel, with maybe some parallels to my life. It ended up seeing print in Latin@ Rising, that became Latinx Rising in the next edition.

And Paco still wouldn’t leave me alone. His world, his life, kept growing in the back of my brain, turning into stories . . .

Ben Bova, who published Cortez on Jupiter, and High Aztech liked these stories, and encouraged me to keep writing them and make them into a novel, like Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. I had thought about it, and was glad he liked the idea.

Then Covid killed him. Now I have to write the book, so I can dedicate it to him.

In the next couple of months, if this year doesn’t get too apocalyptic, another Paco story, “A Wild and Wooly Road Trip on Mars,” will appear in Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex II. I’ll be making a lot of noise about it. 

I also have a file with all the stories, notes, some additional bridging material, and part of another story. It’s about time I focused on finishing the novel I plan to call Paco Cohen is Alive and Well and Living on Mars. A good chunk of it is already written, and I am getting old.

I just hope that no thugs are watching me, waiting to impale me on the fang/spines of vampire cactus.

Ernest Hogan is alive and well and going stark, raving Xicanxfuturist no matter what pendejos running the world do.