Chicanonautica: Homeward Through Planet Nevada

by Ernest Hogan

Getting back to Planet Nevada, gas was $3.69 in the town of Jackpot.

“These gas prices make no sense,” said Mike.

Then wide-open spaces. Cattle country. Surreal landscapes with clouds casting shadows as they caressed mountains dusted with snow.

A lot of America, even in the 21st century, is empty—at least of the unnatural act called civilization—and quiet. We passed through a lot of places without cell service on this trip. Hope some of it stays that way.

The entire town of McGill seemed to be closed or boarded up.

A few houses were occupied, and sporting Halloween paraphernalia.

Near Ely, on highway 101 was a magnificent automobile graveyard.

Behemoths from a past era rusting in the sun. 

If only they could speak.

There were signs of danger.

Further along was a tank.

and a piece of artillery in front of VFW hall.

Then, there was the Prospector Hotel & Casino.

In the middle of a vast nowhere, an ancient covered wagon and sculptures beckoned visitors.

Colorful dinosaurs shared the winding driveway with a copper stagecoach with horses, driver and dog.

Centuries collapse in a time warp where past, present, and future are one.

We passed an old, old sign announcing EMIGRANT SPRINGS. Back in the 19th century the people we call pioneers were called emigrants, because they were leaving the United States of America.

An abandoned truck had TRUMP 2024 painted on it in huge letters.

We went from highway to highway. 93 . .  . 168 . . . 269. Numbers calling out in the timespace continuum. My intergalactic road in broad daylight.

Mike took us on a detour because he wanted to see Valley of Fire State Park.

And it was well worth it.

We hit it in the nick of time–the setting sun was setting the rocks ablaze. 

The moon provided cosmic contrast.

Finally, in Las Vegas gas was $4.89 a gallon.

We spent the night at the Henderson place. I dreamed about killer chimps.

Next morning, homeward. And once again, the country has changed. Are we somehow causing it through our travel? Or is it just that our perspectives have been altered?

Back on the road, a burly pickup with a FUCK BIDEN decal whizzed by.

We went through places we had driven through earlier, only this time we could see the landscape in blazing sunlight. Puts a different spin on Stephen Fry reading ghost stories.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans were going after each other like piranha after a chunk of bloody meat. And I really hope that Biden doesn’t become the 21st century LBJ . . .

The road corkscrewed in and out of the sun.

In the desert near Kingman, in a freshly installed, walled housing tract, a house flew the stars and stripes, a DON’T TREAD ON ME flag, and a Kari Lake banner.

The Love’s truck stop in Kingman was selling gas for $4.29 a gallon.

When we got home, the neighbors had set up a spectacular Halloween tableau,

and one of our agaves had sprouted a stalk.

The next day someone stole the plastic skeletons from the neighbor’s front yard, even though they were tied down. Seems that while miniature and giant plastic skeletons are plentiful, life-sized ones are hard to find and expensive.

Ernest Hogan wants you to buy Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song: 15 Gonzo Science Fiction Stories, and watch for announcements about his reading from it in the podcast version of Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files.

Chicanonautica: Where was Tom Miller?

by Ernest Hogan

He’s not ethnically in the Latinoid continuum, but I think that Tom Miller deserves to be considered an honorary Chicano. He’s lived in Tucson most of his life, and a lot of his writing has been about Aztlán, the border, Latin America, and even Spain, where he explored Don Quixote’s locations and legacy. (I also consider El Quijote to be an honorary Chicano, but I’ll discuss that some other time.)

Throughout his travels and his journalist’s search to find and reveal the truth, he has learned a lot more about our roots and realities than a lot of Latino or Latinx activists.

I also happen to know that he reads La Bloga.

One of his books is On the Border, another is Revenge of the Saguaro, and still another, The Trail of the Panama Hat. He tracked the origins of the song “La Bamba,” sought out Jack Ruby’s kitchen sink, and found love in Castro’s Cuba. He’s written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Life, The Chicago Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, and many others.

This was while mastering the difficult art of living as a freelance writer.  I busted my ass for years trying it, and finally had to go the day job route. It’s a hard life of hustling and insecurity. I admire anyone who can pull it off.

Despite the difficulties, the freelancer's life has its perks. It generates adventures and stories. Now many of these stories, parts of which can be found in his other books, are available in Where was I?: A Travel Writer’s Memoir.

I reveled in it, and not just because I’m obsessed with writer’s lives and careers. Tom Miller’s writing is full of life beyond workaday journalism or commercial travelogues. He is a Writer (yes, the capital W was intentional). 

Not only are fascinating places described, but history is visited: the counterculture, the Cold War, the changes of the turn of centuries. And his work deserves a place in our literary culture.

Where was I? is not only an exquisite read, but got me thinking about how America doesn’t appreciate its writers. They produce wonderful bodies of work and get forgotten in their old age. If you haven’t read any of Tom Miller’s books, I recommend that you do. We will all benefit from it.

Ernest Hogan writes science fiction. He also writes about his travels. This is all while being unashamedly Chicano.

Chicanonautica: Taibo’s ‘68

by Ernest Hogan

Real life goes beyond the horrors of fictional dystopias. ‘68: The Mexican Autumn of the Tlatelolco Massacre, Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s memoir of the 1968 student movement in Mexico City that ends in the Tlatelolco massacre makes all the YA dystopias of the last decades look lame, and the characters are far more interesting. 1984 was a long time ago. Fahrenheit 451 is a nightmare for bookworms. Hunger Games? Back in the 1970s, as a teenager, I had to sign up for a lottery where I could have been sent off to a real life war . . .

I first encountered the writing of Paco Ignacio Taibo II on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. I was just visiting, a turista. In some outdoor halls students were selling used books. There were some magazines with the words ciencia ficción. I got excited. On closer examination, they were two special issues of Comunidad CONACYT, the magazine of Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, that were devoted to science fiction. I bought them.

They were mostly articles about American science fiction, and the authors were quite knowledgeable. The language barrier is also a one-way mirror–they can see our side, we can’t see theirs. But there were also stories by Latin American authors. One that impressed me the most was by Paco Ignacio Taibo II–it was about the future of Mexico, and was quite dystopian, and rooted in and inspired by, reality.

Since then I have sought out more of Taibo’s works, and have not been disappointed, from his novels about detective Héctor Belascorarián Shayne, to his historical, and political nonfiction. I highly recommend him.

‘68 is short, but packed with juicy substance. It probably shouldn’t be read fast. A lot happens in each, brief chapter. More than you’ll find in a lot of fat novels.

He had meant to write a novel about the subject, but couldn’t. It probably would have been too much. And there's no romance, no happy endings, and the devastating ending, which after all is a massacre . . .

And the powers that be keep trying to erase it, which is the dystopian way.

Which is strange in this world where dystopia is a subgenre of escapist entertainment, youthful revolution is the stuff of video games, and people think everything is fake.

But then real revolutions happen in extreme slow motion, over decades, not in street brawls, but in the often dull places where laws, and minds are changed. 

As Taibo put it: Demythification is not the only option. Another is remythication.

It’s all about messing with mythologies. 

In the meantime, I recommend ‘68 to readers of Silvia Moreno-Garica’s excellent bestseller Velvet was the Night, to provide some context.

Ernest Hogan’s new story “Incident in the Global Barrio” will soon appear in El Porvenir, ¡Ya! Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl Chicano Science Fiction Anthology. ¡Chicano sci-fi refuses to die! ¡Viva Zazaismo!

Chicanonautica: Trumpocalypse Now

by Ernest Hogan 

I was expecting an ugly meltdown, but what happened was more than I let my super-charged, twisted Latinoid imagination conjure. It wasn’t  “Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa’s face” like William S. Burroughs said in Naked Lunch, but then there were Trumpsters storming the Capitol, while blasting the Village People’s “Macho Man” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” interrupting the election confirmation debate, disrupting the supposedly sacred democratic process. There was tear gas in the Rotunda. Lawmakers were given “escape hoods,” disposable gas masks that look like space helmets from a low-budget sci-fi production from the Sixties. Shots were fired, and a woman, Ashli Babbit, an Air Force veteran who thought that California’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order was “commie bullshit,” and QAnon conspiracies were the Gospel truth, took a bullet and later died. Jacob Anthony Chansleym AKA Jake Angeli, AKA QAnon Shaman, AKA Baked Alaska, AKA Ali Akbar, part-time actor and voiceover artist from Arizona who lead the attack with in his furry, horned buffalo hat, his face painted, chest bare to show off his Nazi tattoos, lived to get arrested a few days later.

National Guard troops were (eventually) sent in. The Capitol was evacuated. 

Streets were cleared. Property was destroyed. There were injuries and deaths.

If a similar armed insurrection by black or brown protesters had happened, what would have the police/military reaction have been? As compared to, say, last summer’s nonviolent, unarmed Black Lives Matter demonstrations?

Later, Congress returned and in a session that went on into the night, and despite controversy over the electoral votes from Arizona, Biden’s victory in the election was confirmed.

The next day, the headlines of the L.A. Times were:

TRUMP-INCITED MOB STORMS U.S. CAPITOL

4 DIE; OFFICERS, 1 RIOTER INJURED

Congress forced to flee, but electoral vote count resumes hours later

The next day, Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Trumpsters on my feeds (some who are old friends and relatives) have been posting lame, grotesque memes like someone losing an argument bursting out with “Your haircut is lousy!” When they try to comment, it makes no sense, except that they may be trying and failing to be snarky. Or they are announcing that they have had it with politics, and don’t want to hear about it anymore. Still others remain silent, as is their right.

Now, even Republicans are turning against Trump. There’s talk of impeachment, and the 25th Amendment. Voters are fleeing the Republican party. 

Participants (they are being called protesters, rioters, terrorists, etc.) are being arrested because they posted pictures of themselves in the act on social media. Then there was that guy with a truckload of bombs . . . 

How does this concern those of us who are part of the Latinoid continuum? We--our very existence--are part of what this mob is angry about. And now that Trumptopia is self-destructing, they are in crisis mode. Nasty rhetoric, and just talking about violence isn’t enough for them anymore. 

Meanwhile, Trump, until January 20--when the Trumpsters also have plans--is still the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, with access to nuclear launch codes . . .

Con cuidado, mis amigos.

Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction reports that in spite of all the pendejadas going on, his writing career is alive and well and demanding his attention.