CHICANONAUTICA GOES TRAVELING WHILE CHICANO IN TRUMPTOPIA 2.0

Getting ready for a road trip in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Triggering another Chicano identity crisis:

Which gets complicated:

Who is that vato in the mirror?

And wanna talk about complicated?

JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES THROUGH NEW WAVE BABY EYES

I heard that to read Joyce's Ulysses on a phone was blasphemous, so I had to do it. 

I get it now--the Irish are the Chicanos of Britain. All them linguistic shenanigans. I probably wouldn’t have dreamed of the stuff I pulled in High Aztech and Cortez on Jupiter if it wasn’t for good old James Joyce. Civilization ain't nothing but colliding, fighting, fucking streams of consciousness. Inverting Homer’s Odyssey–inverting the space from outer to inner–is a good way to demonstrate it.

And the obscenity gets shattered with one hot lick for man, one giant, nasty slurp for literature, as it broke the legal obscenity barrier with help of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. 

Why aren’t they included in our celebrations of banned books? Dare I mention the Marquis de Sade? Imagine cute teen hipsters wearing FREE DE SADE T-shirts . .  .

Ah, my kind of fun.

I finished it in the waiting room while my wife was getting a wisdom tooth yanked. While I drove her home she was still high on the drugs and grilled me like a stoned lit professor. That was fun too.

Would it also be blasphemous to say that I got into Joyce by way of science fiction? Some of you are picking their jaws off the floor, but I’m probably not the only one, being a New Wave baby, coming of age in the early Seventies, reading things like Philip José Farmer’s Riders of the Purple Sage and Richard Lupoff’s With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old New Alabama in the first two Dangerous Visions volumes. There was also Brain W. Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head, Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy, and probably others that I don’t remember. A whole fricking lost subgenre waiting to be unearthed and explored. 

And in a Feliniesque sequence written before Federico was born, Ulysses actually does get kinda sci-fi:

All you students and academics in need of ideas feel free to plunder. I’m probably not going to do anything with it. I don’t need it. I’m a fountain of ideas.

Fountain of ideas. Stream of consciousness . . .  Slurp . . . Hmm . . . 

Are we blasphemous enough yet?

Back when I was a wage slave for Borders Book Music & Cafe (for you younger folks, it was a big box bookstore, kinda like Barnes & Noble, but more pretension), the phone rang. I answered like a proper corporate android, and a gentleman inquired, “Are you doing anything for Bloomsday?”

“Uh . . . not really,” I answered, knocked back into human mode.

“Harumph. Well, do you know perhaps of a local literary guild that would be doing something?”

Did he know that we were in Phoenix, Arizona? He might as well be asking for a society dedicated to hunting penguins, mermaids, and/or unicorns. 

Poor fellow. I wonder what happened to him? 

What might he think of these musings?

CHICANONAUTICA REPORTS CIBERBANDID@JE IN PARIS

Chicanonautica art manifests in Paris. Read about it at La Bloga.

It triggered a Oaxaqueño flashback:

Ah, Paris:

 

Art:

And protest:

FLASHES OF A DISINTERGRATING SEASON

Another climate change summer coming to an apocalyptic end. I never thought it could outdo the last one, but it does. Isn't it against some law of physics?

Somehow, in the middle of it all, my wife and I manage to find things that are strange and wonderful and worthwhile, to navigate the horror and madness.

Creativity seems to be the key. Always have something squirming around in your brain. Put your own spin in the universe. After all, you are the universe experiencing itself. Do something back when it does things to you.

Pay attention. Keep your sensory array scanning. Move around. Go places. Cherchez le weird, cabrones!

Life is interactive. Like a bullfight. Tauromaquia is the mother of all artforms, from the Neanderthal rodeo to the spaghetti western to the existential shootout between democracy and fascism in the early 21st century. Yeah, you never know if you're the matador or the bull . . .

It’s all mysterious artifacts, out of context, in unlikely locations in the end. Revel in the rasquache scramble. The landfill is archaeology is a treasure trove. All over. All the time.

Weird shit. Weird creatures and beings. Weirder than the stereotypes that society simplifies it all into. 

 

Culture is not what you think. Art is war. Is this not the dystopia you ordered? Would you like to speak to the manager?

And just who is piloting this vehicle? Look around. You are.

CHICANONAUTICA SEZ XICANXFUTURISM IS HERE!

 Because Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I is out. Read about it in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Grito as in: 

But this year is going to be different:

Our futurism has been brewing:

And representation isn't enough:

XICANXFUTURIST SUMMER AND MY OWN PERSONAL AZTLÁN

It’s almost over, this Xicanxfuturist summer, and it’s another different world. I expect to hear about an invasion of Antarctica any day now. Is it martial law yet? Fascism? 

I’m so sick of complaining about it. You can only sing the dystopia/apocalyptic homesick blues for so long.

You can also only sit holed up in an air-conditioned environment for so long.(Phoenix is like a Mars colony, only on Mars it would be cold, but who knows, once the anthropogenic side-effects start kicking in . . .) My wife and I have our wild imaginations, and we also have been able to manage some overnight, out-of-town getaways to cooler climes that aren’t as far away as you’d imagine.

Sedona, Flagstaff, Cottonwood, Jerome. All very different from the Phoenix Metro area.

Different worlds. They're all over, if you have the right kind of eyes hooked to the right kind of brain.

I don’t see “the Southwest” as the creature the Eastern-oriented dominant culture tries to enforce. I see Aztlán.

I don’t mean any kind of separatist/secessionist fantasy that scared the racists into building walls and sending in troops. They shouldn’t worry—when I set my sci-fi worldbuilding mind contemplating plausible scenarios they all collapse under the pesky details. Like the zombie apocalypse, it ain’t gonna happen.

My Aztlán is an alternate reality conjured up when I see through a glorious rasquache scramble into the Wild West mythology, down to its pre-Columbian roots.

My imagination takes off. I want to rearrange it all into locations, props, and concepts for the surrealistic spaghetti western of my dreams. No, I haven’t even begun working on a screenplay. I’m too busy being the Father of Chicano Science Fiction. Besides, who’s going give me the money for such an insane project? I’m going to have to settle for living it.

And what a life it is!

When I look through the photos I take on these trips, I’m delighted. Did it all really happen?

Sometimes we don’t have to go that far. There’s a lot of great places in Downtown Glendale, not far from Hacienda Hogan.

All over Metro Phoenix, and metastasizing into the surrounding deserts, every available lot is being filled with apartment buildings that look like dystopian backdrops. There doesn’t seem to be any thought to where the people will work. Yeah, there’s some talk about tech industries, but I don’t see any sign of them. Maybe the flying saucers full of middle managers will arrive tomorrow. Hopefully they won't be from South Korea.

Worse yet, there’s no thought of where these people will live, as in have FUN.

The Aztlán I dream of is a human environment, full of places like the towns Emily and I like to visit. Not quite utopia, but something to work towards.

Meanwhile, at work, I look out the window and see excavators chewing up the remains of one of last of the malls. We are told that a “walkable village” will be built there. Meanwhile, they're on the verge of declaring martial law in Washington DC. 

The celebrations of Mexican Independence Day in Chicago has been canceled due to the arrival of the National Guard. No grito there, but on 16 de septiembre, Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow is launching as scheduled. Let the cultural revolution begin . . .

CHICANONAUTICA SELLS MY GONZO AGAIN

Chicanonautica, and La Bloga announces me teaching "Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style" again during the Fall Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop. 

 

Secrets of ancient Chicano sci-fi widsom from the dark recesses of my brain can be yours:

 

More ancient than you think:

I stop short of Ernesto brain tacos and monkey brain sushi:

Not to be confused with chicken tacos:

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS: BEYOND THE AFTERWORD

 

Took me the better part of this batshit year to finish The Last Dangerous Visions. I read other stuff in between and got distracted a lot. I mostly liked it. There were a few pieces that I really enjoyed, and some that were just okay, in my humble opinion. And I had questions. 

The afterword answered them. 

Harlan’s problem, besides being bipolar, was his incredible imagination. He could imagine several helluvalots beyond what is possible. It can be frustrating. I know from personal experience.

And after a point, imagination, like talent, becomes dysfunctional. I know about that, too.

Then there’s the whole idea of dangerous visions. It changes, the way society does. 1975, 2025. Two very different worlds. 

These days, most readers (if we can trust the publishers) want cozy reading. Even thrillers, horror, and dystopias reassure us of the delusions that we live by.

But we do need to look beyond what we feel comfortable with. It’s survival. And why we have art and literature.

The table of contents isn’t quite the boy’s club that the first two volumes were. I can attest that as late as the 1980s female genre writers were rare. Really.

A lot of the writers are dead. Worse yet forgotten. For some it was one of the only times they were published. 

We aren’t treated well. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be writers . . .

There weren’t any with the life-changing impact on me like Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riders of the Purple Wage” or Richard A. Lupoff’s “With the Bentfin Boomer Boys in Little Old New Alabama.” The world still isn’t ready to consider that high-tech socialism could be fun, or that racism could be possible on a galactic scale. There were some close calls, but . . . maybe I’ve become grotesquely jaded in my old age.

Some say that you can’t write dangerous stuff in our society where offending is considered a capital offense. Nonsense. You can write anything you want. It's getting published that’s the problem.

I find that to be dangerous, all I have to do is be myself.

I could have been in TLDV. 

Shortly after I moved in with Emily in Arizona, Harlan called my parents—the phone number was on a flyer I had sent him. Things were crazy, and I was hard to track down. He never caught up with me, so I have no idea what it was about. At the time, I thought that TLDV was a done deal and was never going to happen. He may have heard of my reputation as the notorious author of “The Frankenstein Penis." Or maybe he just wanted to say hi. We’ll never know.

Maybe it’s all for the best. I’m causing enough trouble as it is.

And oh, what a dangerous world we’ve made. Dangerous visions may be that only way out.

Thank you, Harlan.

And you, too, J. Michael Syraczinski. 

Stay dangerous, my friends.

CHICANONAUTICA IS STILL LOST IN TRUMPTOPIA AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

 

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:

 And he's still him:

 Ready to give it all away:

What ever happened to saving America?

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS: THE FINAL GULP

The summer burns hotter now. Is that fascism I smell? What do you read in times like this?

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 FINDS MORE THAN ECHOES AND EMBERS

 

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?

THE WHITE WHALE AND OTHER AMERICAN DELUSIONS

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?