Chicanonautica announces Our Creative Realidades: A Nonfiction Anthology being a finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award, at La Bloga.
My essay "Lost in Trumptopia" is part of the book. And guess what? We're still lost. Still there:
What ever happened to saving America?
THE FINAL POGROM by Dan Simmons
Could the title be a reference to Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme, one of my all-time favorites? Got my interest, but no. The story is mondo dangerous, and more relevant than ever, even though there are signs it was written long ago. Viruses are developed as tools for genocide. Holocaust, anyone? Makes High Aztech look cozy. And there is no humor.
INTERMEZZO 7: THE SPACE BETWEEN THE OBVIOUS by D.M. Rowles
Yeah, a bit of a breather was needed after ‘Pogrom’ still a good bit of flash fiction.
FALLING FROM GRACE by Ward Moore
Time renders everything incomprehensible. Memory has its limits. The lesson of the story of Atlantis, and all of archaeology is that your civilization will someday be lost. It’s sad, but the story is hilarious. Laughing can be dangerous.
FIRST SIGHT by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Still another variation on that classic trope of first contact. Clever ideas, but talky.
INTERMEZZO 8: PROOF by D.M.Rowels
Another short, intense gut punch. This time about blood and guts.
BINARY SYSTEM by Kay Hartenbaum
The awful truth is, space travel ain’t gonna be what science fiction fans think. Heresy, but true. Will working on a spaceship be best suited for people who’ve been stripped of both their identity and humanity? Hmm. Maybe this one is more dangerous than I first thought.
DARK THRESHOLD by P.C. Hodgell
A metaphor for death. As I get older, I don’t find death to be so dangerous. Ho hum.
THE DANHANN CHILDREN LAUGH by Mildred Downey Broxon
Not a bad story. Well written, but rather routine. A retarded (yeah, we’re not supposed to use the word, but they haven’t come up with a suitable replacement—as if it’s the very concept that they want to eliminate) child turns out to be a changeling. I have a brother with that affliction, and growing up with him made me more human.
JUDAS ISCARIOT DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF: A STORY IN FRAGMENTS by James S.A.Corey
Straczynski says this is “the most dangerous of all.” Pretty damn close. What would humanity become if we could switch bodies? Is utopia possible? What would it do to taboos? Didn’t quite blow my mind, but then, I’m me.
Whew! There they are, all the stories. Oddly enough, I still have things to say, so next time I’ll discuss the Afterword, and few other things . . .
Chicanonautica reviews a new book by Pedro Iniguez at La Bloga.
He's the author of the award-winning Mexicans on the Moon:
So what is speculative fiction?
How do you spell Xicanxfutursim?
And where is this all going?
So, I finally got around to reading Moby Dick. Trump was seeming like Ahab to me. The library where I work is having its summer reading program, and I had already downloaded it onto my phone. And maybe finally I’m old enough and bashed around enough to truly appreciate it. It made for some interesting breaks and lunch hours.
Images from the John Houston movie kept flashing through my brain. It never was a favorite of mine, but it did leave impressions. I was surprised that a lot of my favorite lines and scenes weren’t in the novel–Ray Bradbury created them in his screenplay, condensing and visualizing Ishmael’s voluminous interior monologue. Ray did say that the screenplay is poetry.
It probably is the Great American Novel, at least for the Nineteenth Century. It’s all there. The whaling industry is the perfect metaphor for the U.S. of A: our relationship to nature, capitalismo, the role of nonwhite peoples, and where are all the women? Largely absent. Most of the shes are ships and female whales.
Obsession is the primary theme. Ahab’s madness, of course, but also Ishmael’s. It’s not Moby Dick that puts the hook through Ishmael’s brain but whales and whaling. The heavy tome is mostly a nonfiction book with a story threaded through it.
Yeah, there’s a lot of what we call infodumping in the sci-fi biz, but it’s really amazing infodumping and keeps segueing smoothly into action scenes. Damn clever, Herman.
The line between fiction and nonfiction is blurred, long before the Swinging Sixties and New and/or Gonzo Journalism. There’s a foreshadowing of Kerouac on the road, Wolfe with the Merry Pranksters, and, of course, Thompson among the Hell’s Angels and looking for the American Dream. A good novelist is a reporter. Reporters also make good viewpoint characters when fiction is set in a world removed from most readers' everyday experience.
This world is exposed with amazing detail. How long has it been since the economy, and most people’s lives, were tied to products harvested from slaughtered whales?
If a science fiction writer could do the same with an invented world, that would be something. Yeah, there’s Dune, but readers get lost in the Flash Gordon action and lose track of Frank Herbert’s lofty message.
Of course, the whaling economy doesn’t exist anymore. We are now dependent on petroleum. But that, too, is changing.
What would the Moby Dick of our era be? What will replace it as the century grinds on? Will there be any great novels in either?
Moby Data . . .
And yes, I’ll say it again, Trump is our Ahab. Do I have to mention that the book does not have a happy ending?
I wonder, are most of us Ahabs or Ishmaels? Am I an Ahab or an Ishmael? Can you be both?
Chicanonautica gets interrupted by Chicano art at La Bloga.
There's an Aztec leisure suit . . .
Surrealist collage techniques:
Rasquachismo:
And a strange book :
The animal rights protests, again, were a suitable preface. More like an opening ceremony than ever. Could be another outtake from a surrealistic, sadomasochist, spaghetti western. Naked bodies splashed with fake blood. And the Virgin Mary. Sets the mood.
The bulls are extra rambunctious this year. Runners fall before they come near. They plow through the crowded street, charge the spectators. They seem to have caught the psychological virus that has been warping human behavior this year.
I could say that I watch these things because I’m researching my science fiction bullfighting novel (the world doesn’t want it, so it’s probably just what it needs . . .) but I admit I’m obsessed with the running of the bulls at the fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain, is not for the macho posturing, but the chance to see people facing fear. Any frame of a video of an encierro is loaded with drama. Not just around the bulls, with human bodies close to hooves and horns, but around the edges.
People dressed to run are often frozen with fright, clinging to a wall, faces twisted, others on the ground, twitching in fetal position.
This is why, like bullfighting–the mother of all art forms, dating back to the Neanderthal rodeos–is more a sacred ritual than sport as recognized by Western Civilization. If we lose these traditions, we will lose an important part of what it is to be human.
Transhumanists be damned. We need to go wild in the streets.
Speaking of wild in the streets, I watched the 1968 movie by that title again–such things help me keep a perspective in time of political turmoil. I see it differently now that I am older and our situation is more desperate. Funny how people will give a charismatic figure with an appealing message power. Wonder if Trump ever saw it?
Has anyone else noticed that the “don’t trust anyone over 30” attitude has come back among youngsters in the last couple of decades? Some people wouldn’t mind being put in a “retirement” camp with free drugs. What is utopia to some is dystopia to others.
Meanwhile, a fascist state is being built around us. What ICE is doing is becoming more than political performance art with occasional casualties. We are going to have to face our fears, in the streets, maybe even our homes.
We’ll see what we’ll all be doing when it comes to our towns. It’ll be like the monster movies I grew up on, with crowds trampling each other while rushing to escape the giant insects and/or reptiles. Will we run, drop to the pavement in terror, or even fight? Is sci-fi far-out enough to prepare us?
Que sera, sera, as the old song goes. There are more encierros, I’ll be watching them first thing in the morning until the last day.
And then . . . the future!
Quite a daze in Chicanonautica, at La Bloga:
In honor of the 4th of July:
And the state of the union:
In a peculiar mood:
Do all aliens look alike to you?
My life is suddenly full of things that take me away from reading. There was that scorpion that stung my wife (nine times!) . . . And now we're checking the news to see if it’s World War Three yet . . .
But enough of this . . .
GOODBYE by Steven Utley
A short, bittersweet take on time travel. A man has an affair with a woman from the future is left only with anger, grief, and frustration. Dares suggest that a favorite fantasy probably isn’t a good idea. Somewhat dangerous, but it won’t change the world. It is a good story, though.
PRIMORDIAL FOLLIES by Robert Sheckley
For you younger folks out there, Robert Sheckley deserves an introduction. He is one of the funniest, and most original science fiction writers. If you like Douglas Adams, you should check out Sheckley. You’ll be damn glad you did.
And Harlan’s account of its writing in Partners in Wonder is hilarious.
Though not as good as “I See a Man . . .” in “Primordial Follies” Scheckley is in classic form. It cracks the confines of the science fiction genre, barrages the reader with weird ideas in an absurdist romp that challenges all ideas about the universe, its creation, and destruction. It’s also about the dangers of eating.
Is it just me, or have people gotten batshit crazy about eating in the last few decades? It could make an interesting anthology. Hmm . . .
MEN IN WHITE by David Brin
This one was a disappointment, even though Brin is a great writer and the story is well done. It reverses the Men In Black concept. Turns out all the UFOs, the paranormal, and conspiracy theories are true. A dangerous enough idea, but, even though I’m as skeptical about such things as Brin and Harlan, but I’ve exposed myself to a lot of UFO lit. Hell, I’ve even seen one. That stuff makes the story seem rather ho-hum.
I hesitate to recommend the book Hollywood Vs the Aliens by Bruce Rux. My hesitation is because I swear that it felt like I could feel brain cells dying while I read parts of it. Examples: Rux suggests that Gene Roddenberry enlisted Harlan in a media conspiracy to make the subject of UFOs look silly, and Nixon had The Rocky Horror Picture Show made to discourage U.S. military personnel from having sex with aliens. Pursue at your own risk.
INTERMEZZO 6: CONTINUITY by D.M. Rowles
Speaking of UFOs, this flash piece is a tale of alien abduction that turns the whole idea of alien abduction inside out. A love story with a happy ending.
And now back to my dangerous, apocalyptic, crazy summer . . .
It's news and other weirdness in Chicanonautica, at La Bloga:
Because Xicanxfuturism was too big . . .
Then there were other phenomena:
It's sci-fi, and beyond . . .
What can you do when you're teaching a class on writing Chicano science fiction while protests are spreading like wildfire across the country, drones and missiles are flying, and scorpions are showing up in the bedroom?
What else? A road trip! An overnight getaway during our mid-week days off.
Did I mention that it’s getting into the triple digits in the Metro Phoenix Area? And this summer is busy and crazy?
It’s cooler up north, Sedona, Cottonwood, Jerome, Prescott . . .
Is it weird, or are we all hallucinating?
Even computers hallucinate these days.
Mythical creatures are going high tech.
You can’t tell the aliens from the natives.
Salvador Dalí, your ants have gotten loose again.
Is this Mayalandia or Loch Ness?
It's a world of hairy bandidos and stairways of doom.
Chicanonautica is all about how I wrote a story about a mass deportation, over at La Bloga.
So here we are . . .
While I'm giving writing advice . . .
Time to be like Oscar Zeta Acosta . . .
And don't be afraid to be crazy . . .
Almost summer. Another apocalyptic one. This book review is taking up a fat chunk of the year, but then, in this year, I need it. Now . . .
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA by Robert Wissner
We come to the kind of story that this anthology was intended for. A truly dangerous vision! It breaks all the rules and tears society to bloody shreds. Not only are the traditional restrictions of the pulp science fiction magazine shattered, but so are the barriers of genre—is it speculative fiction? Satire? Fantasy? Horror? Could it actually be mainstream literature (something that Harlan always aspired to)? Then it gets to a bizarre place where slapstick collides with surrealism and dada.
The weirdest thing is, it probably could happen. Some avant-garde performance art piece going out of control. If the right individuals read it . . .Talk about dangerous.
It’s like the scene in the Marx Brothers movie A Day at the Races (not A Night at the Opera) where Harpo demolishes a piano so he can play it’s guts like a harp, but it goes far beyond that—like Luis Buñuel took over, in his close-up-on-a-sliced-eyeball mood, then the mayhem popped out of the screen and attacked the audience.
I’m deliberately not describing the story because J. Michael Straczynski is right--it’s best for the reader to be surprised by this diabolical gem.
It’s almost as if the preceding stories were meant to lull the reader into a false sense of security. Yeah, you can take all this so-called dangerous stuff—then: AIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!
The mad genius who came up with this masterpiece only published a handful of stories in what they called “original anthologies” in the Seventies. Most of them were variations on the Dangerous Visions theme. The New Wave. Ah, kiddies! Them wuz the daze!
Googling him comes up with Robert Wissners who were (several obituaries) doctors in various states of the union. For whatever reason he has dropped off the ever more exacting radar. Maybe he was one of the doctors. Maybe he died. Maybe he just got fed up and went off to do something reasonable with his life.
I’d like to think that he’s still alive and well somewhere, and in some peculiar way, getting the last laugh.
In some high school campus, a quirky lass is slipping this story before the unprepared eyes of a quiet lad who led a sheltered life, and maybe the two of them will live outrageously, if not ever after, for one bright, shining moment. The image makes me smile . . .
Thank you, Robert Wissner, wherever you are.
It's a crosscultural crosswalk crossfire in Chicanonautica at La Bloga.
Looks like some hombres ain't to bad anymore:
Are we sci-fi yet?
And what about Anna's Humming bird, besides mutations?
No, I haven’t gone back to school. I’m gonna be the teacher again.
Me. A teacher. Never thought that would happen, me and school never getting on so good and all . . .
Turns out I’m not too bad at it. In all these decades I’ve been a writer, I’ve learned a few things, and people are willing to pay to hear it.
Granted, it meant I had to stop and think about it. I don’t like to think about it. If I was the type to make a list of rules I’d start with “Don’t think about it–do it.” I don’t care for talking about writing, but will do it for money.
There are people for whom talking about writing is their idea of a good time. I try to avoid them and wonder if their writing is as boring as their yacking.
Same for those who want to talk about creativity, and ways to get in the mood. I’m always in the mood. My dangerously overactive imagination grinds away all day and night all the time. Why do you think I became a writer?
I have a file of notes of things to bring up, and I’m going over them, making changes and additions. People have asked me to publish these notes, but they’d make pretty lousy reading. They really are just a bunch of notes. I put them in order to give me things to talk about during each day of the class, and to use if the students (me having students . . . still sounds weird) run out of things to say.
It would be great if they were a lively bunch, and we spent the whole time throwing around ideas and experiences, inspiring each other, y’know, being creative . . .
Sometimes I change my mind about things. Rules come, and go, for reasons. I like to break them now and then to see if they still apply. I break my own rules, to keep myself on my toes, and to weed out the clichés that people say in creative writing classes because they're just are too lazy to come up with real advice.
That’s pretty good. I should put it in the notes . . .
If I go over it, and think (ugh!) about it, my confidence will cancel my imposter syndrome, and I’ll be able to seem enough like a teacher to make the students feel they got their money’s worth.
I’ve never had imposter syndrome about being a writer, or an artist. Throw me into just about any kind of creative activity–even if I’ve no training or background in it–and I’ll come up with something, even if it’s making a fool of myself.
People like it when I make a fool of myself. It's good not to take yourself too seriously. That could be a rule . . .
But I’m uncomfortable being a teacher. I’ve also felt it as a janitor, housekeeper, and a bookstore clerk, though I got good enough at that so when it came time to become a library worker (NOT a librarian, I do the grunt work) I could slip into that role.
Maybe I’ll be doing more of this in my old age. If the price is right.
