CHICANONAUTICA MEETS FEDERICO SCHAFFLER

The latest Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, documents my meeting with Mexican science fiction writer Federico Schaffler, and how we're going to write a story that exploits the weirdness generating from the U.S. Mexico border, and Arizona. In celebration of our quixotic project, here's some variations on the theme:

Down in Mexico, the street does find it's own uses for technology, and art, and gets stark, raving sci-fi:

Up norte, Chicano mad scientists do the same:

And to a lot of gringos, Mexico is just a whole lot of monster movie stuff:

They also see Borderlandia as an expansion of a Brave New Third World:

Meanwhile, others are trying to cook up their own transborder utopias:

Yes, amigos, crossing borders is easy – and fun! You should try it sometime:

THE DAY I WAS A POLITICAL PROP

Back in the now mythic Nineteen-Seventies, after the Watergate scandal broke and they brought the troops back from Vietnam, America was in a peculiar kind of turmoil, and I was attending Mt. San Antonio College where the L.A. smog pools up against the San Gabriel Mountains. To quote one of my teachers: “I keep expecting to see people wearing crossed ammunition belts.” Still, they kept trying to get us involved with the community . . . and politics.

A history teacher recommended that we go to hear a political candidate at the Free Speech Area. I wasn't doing anything that afternoon, and had never been to a political event before, so I hung around, cruising for a place where I could quietly sneak off if it got boring.

The Candidate was a white man who glowed in the SoCal afternoon sun. He looked at me and leered like hungry predator. He zoomed over, grabbed my hand, and said, “Hello! Glad to meet you!”

Like a gang boss signaling his goons, he communicated with his People. Suddenly, I was surrounded. They grabbed me like I was a potted-plant, took me over, and smacked me down behind and a little to the right of the Candidate.

Guess they thought my Jimi Hendrix/Abbie Hoffman hair and golden brown skin would help sell the Candidate to the students.

This was all without a word to me. They didn't ask if I wanted to be there. I kept thinking that this would make an escape difficult.

The Candidate had brought his teenaged son and daughter. They were more clean-cut looking than your average Mt. SAC student in those days. They were passing out flyers for a Christian Rock Concert.

“You really ought to come,” she said.

“It's really great music,” he said.

“Christian rock sucks,” said a student.

This was in the early days of the genre. Most Christian Rock back then was made by Jesus Freaks – ex-hippies who found Jesus, as one explained to me:

“I was up in the mountains dropping acid when Jesus himself came down from the sky and ended my acid trip, and told me to go forth and devote my music to spreading his message.”

His songs were mostly popular tunes that he had reworded so that Jesus replaces the intended object of affection, like, “Jesus loves you – yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Most of their flyers ended up on the ground.

Then the Candidate started speaking. He was an early Christian conservative.

Most of the students were tangled up in the post-hippie/pre-punk counterculture of the times. They liked long hair, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that blasted the joys of that lifestyle. A lot of them didn't believe that there was going to be future, and acted accordingly.

The Candidate said that even though he was a conservative, he was willing to reach out to and represent them.

He didn't mention minorities, but then I was standing there making it look like he was popular in the local barrios and ghettos.

The audience wasn't impressed.

A few weeks earlier, from the same microphone, a young woman had warned: “Like, ya watch out, cuz, there's a lotta people around, like, you don't know them, and, like, they're gonna wanna smoke it with ya, but, y'know, they're narcs!”

If he wanted to win over this crowd, he should have said that he was willing to work his ass off to legalize marijuana. That would have chanted his name and carried him around campus on their shoulders.

Then, to show how honest he was, the Candidate said that he was against abortion.

He was booed.

And a predictable argument started.

I had seen enough. I wanted out of there. Unfortunately, I was standing right behind the Candidate.

I had also been treated like prop in this lame attempt at political drama. Somehow I didn't feel obliged to be polite. So I mimed a big, theatrical yawn, and walked away.

Later, the history teacher frowned with disapproval as he told me, “I saw your 'commentary' at the event!”

Since then, I've watched the people standing behind candidates when politicians speak. Most stand there looking like they are receiving a great honor. Others look bored. Others – the reluctant, rebellious ones commit acts of defiance like mine: funny faces, eye-scratching, nose-picking, and – the champ, in my opinion – a black man who juggled a Lifesaver on his tongue.

So, if a politician has his (or her) people grab you and put you into the dehumanizing role of a political prop, do something silly. These days it'll end up on YouTube – heh-heh!

It will also force them to act human . . . if they can.

And if they can't, well, we need to take that into consideration when we vote.

CHICANONAUTICA REVEALS MY WRITER'S LIFE

This tie-in to my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga is a problem. It's about what's going in my writing life. Unfortunately, there aren't any videos of that, and I don't have the time to make any. So instead, here's some advice from other writers.

I don't like to go around giving advice on how to become a writer. It's kind of like giving advice on how to become a drug addict. What if somebody actually succeeds?

Ray Bradbury is always good for getting you fired up:

Here's Kurt Vonnegut on the art of the short story:

Does anybody read short stories anymore?

As for attitude, here's Henry Miller:

And Hunter Thompson:

COPPERCON THOUGHTS AND VISIONS

The illustrations for this post were drawn at CopperCon.

It was a small convention. And it was the same weekend as WorldCon and DragonCon. The attendees were mostly local. I got to talk to writers, writer wannabes, and – lo and behold! – there were actual readers there.

Some of them were even the old-fashioned quirky individual fans rather than postmodern entertainment consumers who wear off-the-rack nerd identities and are delighted to see what their favorite multinational corporations have created for them.

I miss science fiction that was a hot rod for the imagination, created and customized by renegade mad scientist-types. These days, genre fiction tends to be like mass produced commuter vehicles that safely take you in and out of your dull life. I prefer mine to send my brain soaring off with the risk of crashing and burning.

Who needs a dull life anyway?

It was a lot like small conventions from thirty years ago, only smaller. And books are becoming a rare commodity. Sigh.

For long time at conventions, what the writers talked about was what new trend was hot and how you damned well better jump on it if “they” were going to publish your books and make you rich. The hottest books right now are Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels, and there weren't any seminars on how to add sadomasochism to your genre stories as the way to bestsellerdom. No bandwagons to jump on, just advice on how to survive – or, bizarre as it seems, get started in the disintegrating world of publishing.

Writers who are experiencing success in traditional publishing – most of them admit to having day jobs – are still pushing the old ways. If I had a deal with some New York outfit, I'd probably be doing the same. Why not? The dream of being a bestselling, millionaire author is powerful, and it's not dying even though in reality bestselling authors work ten hour days, seven days a week churning out what the publishers tell them will sell.

Yeah, they get paid big bucks, but what good is it if you can't enjoy it? And if a job demanded those kind of hours – who in their right mind would take it?

Then there's the science crowd. Scientists are fans, writers, often both, and have interesting things to say. David Lee Summers writes, edits, and works as an astronomer at Kitt Peak Observatory – his presentation on the hunt for extrasolar planets was inspiring and mind-blowing.

I always hope to get my mind blown at a con.

So the New Media Bookacalypse has put us back into another hunter/gather era. Readers and writers are hunting each other. I hope we can establish the right kind of communication.

After all, there are so many worlds to explore.

CHICANONAUTICA REMEMBERS A BULLET FOR A GENERAL

Chicanonautica over at La Bloga recalls the spaghetti western that changed my life, A Bullet for the General, in which – among other mayhem – an English actress does her version of revolutionary Mexican womanhood:

From an American production of the same year, here's two Italian-American actors and a couple of scorpions in one of Hollywood's most outrageous Wild West scenes:

And just in case you were wondering why the El Chuncho attitude is still necessary:

So let's hear Charro Avitia sing a cheerful love song to a gun:

THROUGH TIME AND TIMBUCTOO WITH TAHIR SHAH

I love Tahir Shah's books. They are travelogues that read like fantastic novels. He is a master storyteller. I wondered what it would be like if he wrote fiction. His latest book, Timbuctoo – I'm happy to say, proves him to be an excellent novelist.

It shouldn't be a surprise -- storytelling is storytelling, be it true or make-believe.

But then, this is a true story, that of Robert Adams, “an illiterate American Sailor, taken as a slave in the Great Zahara and, after trials and tribulations aplenty, reaching London where he narrated his tale,” to quote the cover that, in words, does the book more justice than any image could.

Shah admits: “I am no historian, and have massaged facts and fictions into place, re-conjuring history.” Which, of course, in how great fiction is made.

And Timbuctoo is great fiction, a masterpiece of adventure. Tahir Shah deserves a place beside H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Ernest Hemingway

Though set in 1815, this novel will sweep 21^st century readers along with its smooth style and an ingenious, interweaving, Arabian Nights storyteller style that zigzags from Timbuctoo to London.

And this London is just as strange and exotic as Timbuctoo:

With Caldecott at its helm, the African Committee was, in Adam's mind, little better than King Woolo's regime. Both men were repressive in their own way, champions of avarice and perversion.

It does for time travel what Tahir Shah's nonfiction books do for global travel. And even though it takes place early in the steam era, fans of steampunk will find their universes rocked when they read it. It makes the alien planets of most space operas look dull.

Having just returned from wandering the supposed location of North America's Seven Cities of Gold, Timbuctoo has the sci-fi trickster in me fantasizing about rumors of cities of gold on Mars . . .

CHICANONAUTICA READS THROUGH NEW MEXICO

I write about what I read, and found, in New Mexico, in my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga.

Here's an interesting interpretation of the beginning of Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony:

I re-read Bless Me, Ultima in Rudolfo Anaya territory:

Buffalo's kept appearing, as images, and I even encountered the real thing, and a reprint of a Buffalo Bill dime novel:

And Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is alive and well . . . at Disneyland Paris:

What will casino-rich New Mexico be like in the near future?

WEIRD ROADS THROUGH NEW MEXICO

At 6 A.M. we were still in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jurisdiction. A guy was walking down a street carrying a case of Tecate, ready to face a blazing Wednesday in Phoenix.

Soon I spotted datura growing alongside Highway 17. Plaster dinosaurs, concrete teepees, and abandoned structures decorated with colorful graffiti – the new ruins – informed us that we were on our way to the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, and the Big Rez. At a rest stop, a sign warned: POISIONOUS SNAKES AND INSECTS INHABIT THIS AREA.

We were still in Arizona.

Then the road signs started to read like Zen koans: ZERO VISIBILITY POSSIBLE . . . GUSTY WINDS MAY EXIST . . . We had crossed over into New Mexico.

Sky City Casino sounded like something out of a reboot of Flash Gordon to me. Even here, infernal corporations are messing with our mythologies.

Los Lobos were playing at the Buffalo Thunder Casino.

Oddly, casinos blend into the eclectic/Native/Spanish colonial/Wild West/UFO New Mexico environment with its mountains that look like surrealistic sculpture gardens with pretty little graveyards.

These have to be the prettiest graveyards in the world. And they're everywhere.

I couldn't help imagining vampires and zombies rising from those colorful graves.

When the sun set, it made the storms clouds look like they were raining fire.

The neighborhood rooster was time-warped. He crowed late, and at various times during the day.

A cow mooed at dawn, though.

At least the rooster isn't crowing in the middle of the night – that would be scary . . .

But then this is the homeland of La Llorona and El Cucuy. There is even a local version of bigfoot. And that Internet Age media-upstart El Chupacabra keeps showing up in the mysterious New Mexico night.

Coyotes visited us after midnight. They made different sounds than Arizona coyotes – I wasn't sure what they were at first. They seemed to be talking, and they had a lot to say.

Later, the cow mooed at the rising sun, again.

We saw the tiniest roadkill ever on the road to Española: some kind of rodent, in perfect condition. The vehicle must have just missed it, causing it to die of fright.

Graffiti told us that a twisty, tree-lined stretch of mountain neighborhood was the home of WILD BOYS! The exclamation point was part of the name.

Not far away, a sign warned: YOU ARE BEING VIDEOTAPED BY NIGHT VISION DIGITAL CAMERAS.

Later in Española, another sign proudly announced that Blake's Lotaburger was NOW UNDER 24 HOUR SURVEILLANCE.

There's so much in New Mexico, you could spend several lifetimes exploring it. Something like cryptids, extraterrestrial visitors, paranormal phenomena, or strange rituals could go unnoticed, blending into the complicated landscape like the casinos.

A mad scientist could set up a shop here and avoid publicity. These rural neighborhoods that look more like enchanted forests than small towns. Huge dogs cut you off in on a dead-end street and bark into your windshield. They know how to keep secrets here.

If you're lucky you'll escape around the next blind curve into national park-ish panoramic vistas . . . where there are life-sized crosses on some of the gnarled hills.

This was close to Chimayó, which was the center of activity – including flagellation and crucifixion – for Los Hermanos Penitentes back in the 19^th century.

We also visited cliff dwellings in volcanic tuff that looked like a swiss cheese of carvable rock. Could Cappadocia-like subterranean cities be possible? And what about those rumors of underground UFO bases around Dulce? And the fantastic tunnels that David Hatcher Childress is so fond of?

Maybe a conquistador looking for the Seven Cities of Gold could have gotten lost in this tangled knot of spacetime, and find himself in a modern Indian casino. He'd just be another Spanish-speaking homeless guy. And there actually is a Cities of Gold casino, with an offramp, near Los Alamos, where you can get around via Atomic City Transit.

This really is the Land of Enchantment, as the license plates say. And the Land of the Weird as others say.

The Virgin of Guadalupe, the secret identity of the pagan Earth Goddess, is everywhere. I saw more shrines and statues in her honor here than in the Metro Phoenix's West Side.

Ravens were everywhere, too. We saw a lot of them sitting on poles as we went up to Taos to get coffee in the Zen Gardens of the Wired Cafe.

As we returned to our guest house, we found large, dead flies on the bed, and a dead bird by the front door.

I'm not able to decode whatever it means, but there is something going on in New Mexico, something that has been going on for a long time, way back to the to time of the Earth Mother, and the Ancient Coyote, and even before the forgotten reign of the Centipede God – that may be restarted any day now.

A millipede did greet us as we entered the Petroglyph National Monument . . .

And we encountered buffalo (okay, technically bison) on a nearby ranch where they are being bred in a kind of newfangled Ghost Dance.

Too soon, it was time to go home, switching from traveling up and down El Camino Real – that goes south all the way to La Capital Azteca – to crisscrossing Route 66.

We saw the future as we passed the Petroglyphs Trails Subdivision, and signs for a CURANDERA – ESPIRITISTA and the NEW MEXICO GLADIATOR DASH. And ¡Traditions! “A Festival Marketplace” had flying saucers painted on the walls of its diner.

Back in Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, in the middle of an empty field, a chipped and faded sign read: METEORITES 50% OFF.

CHICANONAUTICA ROAD TRIPS THROUGH AZTLÁN

I'm road tripping across Arizona, into New Mexico, and singing the praises of the roads of Aztlán in my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga. So while I'm decompressing and readjusting to by routine, here are some New Mexico videos:

Here's an official promotion of New Mexico tourism:

Of course, when I go I'm hoping to find things more like this:

There's also a local version of Bigfoot:

And the UFOs keep appearing:

Also, New Mexico was one of America's atomic testing sites:

So who know's what I'll come back with?

SEEKING SAN FERMÍN'S HELP WITH MY BULLFIGHTING NOVEL

Saint Fermin isn't a patron of the arts. His cloak protects against close calls, and I have plenty of those. And look what he did for Hemingway. Maybe he'll be willing to help another Ernest write a novel.

Luckily, in this day and age, I don't have to actually go to Pamplona. The interwebs have provided ways for me to take in the the fiesta and still be there for my shift at my day job. I am a Walter Mitty of the Information Age.

PETA's pre-fiesta protests were disappointing again. Gone are the days when they were like the climax to surrealistic, sadomasochistic spaghetti westerns. They brought back exposed breasts, but kept the black loincloths. And I noticed fewer participants. I would be sad if this tradition faded away.

Crowds getting out of control caused the Riau-Riau, a march of Pamplona city officials, to be canceled due to a near riot triggered by orgiastic behavior – women riding on men's shoulders, breasts shown and touched – after the opening Tuxpinazo rocket launch: the Tuxpinazo begins a high that for many people will last the whole week, according to SanFermin.com.

Attempts to ban fountain jumping did not curtail the dangerous activity. Some traditions can't be stopped.

In the first encierro, a bull hooked a man's shirt and bandana, dragging him for 39 meters. It was like an old-fashioned men's adventure magazine story.

On the second day the bulls from Miura – infamous for killing matadors (one killed Manolete) – did a badass run, though there were no injuries. There were injuries during other encierros.

There were runners with cameras strapped to their heads, though I haven't seen any of their videos online yet. More women are running. And people of color. Also folks with gray and while hair. One guy had a red turban.

More and more, I see the aspects of a religious ritual: Some runners jump up and down like pogoing punk rockers while waiting for the bulls, while others sing to the effigy of Saint Fermin. There is a strong compulsion to touch the bulls, and run with a hand on the bulls back or holding a horn. Pagan bull worship is alive and well.

Some people cower in the awesome presence of the bulls. At the beginning of the encierro, you see them, hesitating, deciding not to run, or letting the bulls pass and running behind them. One guy with a camera strapped to his head froze, his mouth open, hands shaking beside his face as a horn cut by him. Others fell and curled into fetal position. Another crawled and tried to hide behind the legs of people who were frozen with terror, leaning against a wall.

I don't think any less of these folks. Here in the artificial environments of 21^st century civilization, we lose touch with nature, forget what it can be like and how powerful it is. These people may have gotten scared, but they got face-to-face with the Beast. I congratulate them.

The final day was dominated by Juan José Padilla, back from having lost an eye when he was gored in the face. Now he wears an eyepatch. El Ciclón de Jerez now flies the skull and crossbones. He kills magnificently without binocular vision. The crowds treat him like a saint who was resurrected from the dead.

Gracias, San Fermín. I am inspired. The sci-fi/dystopian ideas are raging across my synapses.

It's all about crowd control. Which is mind control writ large. Which is what religion is all about. Politics, too.

That's dangerous territory. And that's where I need to be.