SMOKING MIRROR BLUES NOW ON SMASHWORDS

Good news, users of ereading devices other than Kindle: My novel Smoking Mirror Blues in now available through Smashwords, so you can get it in other formats. And it's only $0.99! 

And you can get the same low price on Kindle.

Support the Ernest Hogan Defense Fund!

SCI-FI EYE FRY FROM SAMBADROME

2013 has had me running around in all kinds of crazy business. I didn't have a lot of time to surf the online carnaval coverage. Luckily, the YouTube channel Carnaval Completo made things easy for me.

Here's some of my favorites:

First, here's a giant snake, some spectacular aerial shots of Sambadrome, and a fantastic take on Latin American history:

Next, we start wiith a giant robot lion, and go on to sci-fi eye fry:

And this one can only be described as Edgar Rice Burroughs on acid:

Make my visual cortex smile all the way down to my hypothalamus!

CHICANONAUTICA ON THE ANTHOLOGY FRONT

My latest adventures on the anthology front are featured in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

One of the stories I sold is “Pacho Villa's Flying Circus” – a post-steampunk adventure. So, here's a Hollywood version of General Villa dealing with a new technology:

That story also features Nikola Tesla:

The other story I sold is “Novaheads,” a post-cyberpunk take on masked Mexican wrestlers. Meanwhile, Mil Máscaras has come out in a new movie:

And what could be more in the Aztec Valentine mood than Santo battling witches?

BETTER LIVING THROUGH SKUGGERY

Frankly, my dears, I enjoyed the living hell out of Rudy Rucker's latest novel, Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel. Just look at the title: Turing – Burroughs – Beatnik – SF . . . a recipe for some kind of brain-slamming ecstasy. And it delivers!

Yes, it really is a novel about Alan Turing, one of the men who brought us into the computer age, and William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and seminal figure of the Beat movement. It is science fiction and takes place in beatnik spacetime.

It brings all these elements together in an adventure with two renegade homosexuals and skugs (Turing's living biocomputational inventions).  It transcends sex, sexuality, and race, reminding us of Astouding Science Fiction's influence of Burroughs, and putting a spin on history that will make the conspiracy theorists happy.

It's cutting edge, but reads like excellent classic science fiction.

Okay, the hallucinatory joys of skuggery and biocomputational transformation would have been a horror that the government would be justified in destroying in a traditonal Fifties sci-fi novel. This is a different viewpoint, more William Burroughs than John W. Campbell, but at the same time Rucker gives us a joie de vivre – or maybe I should say joie de weird – that is his own, and quite contemporary.

And you don't have to be a Burroughs/Beat scholar to enjoy it, though those in the know will be impressed at how Rucker can write in Burroughs' voice.

This is a book for the 21^st century beatniks living in the new underground. Or, as Rucker has Allen Ginsberg say:

"New pariahs! The queers, the commies, the Blacks, the dope fiends, the jazz musicians, the mad, the abstract painters, the unions, the Beat poets . . . and now the skuggers."

There was a time when science fiction was such a thing. I think it's time it became that again.

Note that Turing & Burroughs was self-published rather than a big release from a New York publisher. The dying world of traditonal publishers wouldn't dare touch it, even though its appeal is to multiple crossover markets that could make it a bestseller. The corporate world is too busy chasing old formulas that are out of sync with our transmogrifying world.

They are afraid. And it's their loss.

So buy yourself a copy, read it and spread the word. The world will be a better place for it.

CHICANONAUTICA SEES OVNIS OVER AZTLÁN

We’re seeing OVNIs -- UFOs -- this time in Chicanonautica over at La Bloga with a look at Hispanic UFO lit, and one of the wildest lucha movies ever.

Meanwhile, here’s more on the first reported case a man having sex on flying saucer:

And it looks like more than volcanic rumblings are happening in Mexico:

How many UFOs are actually drones?

So, amigos, keep watching the skies, and the border!

ANOTHER ERNESTO STORY, ANOTHER ANTHOLOGY

2013 just keeps on keeping on!

“Novaheads,” my post-cyberpunk take on the masked Mexican wrestler genre featuring a dangerous chili-based drug will appear in Super Stories of Heroes & Villains. Look for it in August.

There's more about “Novaheads” and Steelsnake, my luchador hero, but let's save that for later . . .

FIRST ERNESTO STORY SALE OF 2013

I'm off and running this new year, new baktún, with another story sold.

“Pancho Villa's Flying Circus” – a post-steampunk spaghetti western with Pancho Villa, Nikola Tesla, and airship, and death rays – will be be in the anthology We See a Different Frontier edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes.

It should be hitting the bookshelves in July.

CHICANONAUTICA GOES TO THE WORLD WIDE WILD WEST SHOW

Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, gets chased by the ghost of Buffalo Bill to the World Wide Wild West Show. And look at the video extras I found:

Who would have thought that there was a song about Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, written by Ernest Hogan, Father of Ragtime, for his 1907 Broadway play, The Oyster Man?

The Indian attack leapt from the Wild West show to the western movie. We haven't seen a lot of it in recent decades, but here's a 21^st century variation from England:

Shades of Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller, there are still uncontacted tribes out there, though governments don't want to believe in them:

Be careful when seeking spiritual enlightenment in places like Sedona, Arizona:

And of course, these days, even cowboy culture has been translated into native languages:

ERNESTO INTERVIEW AT LATINOPIA

Cuallioso news, namiquetzime! And some nigrománticoa, too – heh-heh!

There's a video interview of me at Latinopia.com. It was shot in the Venusian Jungle Garden, here at the Hogan hacienca. I shoot my mouth off about High Aztech and Chicano science fiction.

So, I better get to work, and hurry up and get that ebook ready . . .

And, there may be some other cuallioso High Aztech news soon, so stay tuned, namiquetzime!

¡Ticmotraspasarhuililis!

SMOKING MIRROR BLUES ONLY 99 CENTS!

Yes, I've lowered the price of the Kindle Smoking Mirror Blues to 99 cents! Like Cortez on Jupiter! Less than a buck! Just to see if more of you will buy it!

Better do it now! I may change my mind again . . .

And you know how my mind can be.