LOST CIVILIZATIONS, GHOSTS TOWNS, AND DISAPPEARING PEOPLE IN ARIZONA

We were getting past Devil’s Canyon, listening to the rocks and mountains telling hundreds of millions of years worth of stories, and entering the Tonto National Forest when I decided to name our rented Ford Escape Jay Silverwheels. Some of you probably don’t get the reference. There was this guy named Jay Silverheels, who played, Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick . . .

Do you know about the Lone Ranger? How the past slips away. If you’re lucky you become archaeology. If not, you are simply forgotten.

Soon we saw mountains whose characters and legends were smoothed away by strip mining. An awesome sight, but not quite as awesome as the natural hoodooistic landscapes where I spotted a few pairs of panties abandoned in the scenic overlooks along with fallout of fast food consumption. Some people eat their Macfood, others lose their underwear. Still, most Americans don’t appreciate what a fantastic place they live in.

The mining towns of Superior and Globe/Miami are taking on the aspect of ghost towns these days. Video stores, gas stations, motels, restaurants, and houses stand empty. The mines are closing, people are leaving.

I’m reminded of the so-called disappearance of the Maya that is a popular subject as we get closer to 2012. Folks wonder where they went and why they left their cities empty. Theories have them vibrating to a higher plane of reality, or being transported offplanet by UFOs.

That all makes for stimulating conversation, but the reality is a little more mundane. The economic system that kept the cities of the Maya going collapsed. People needed to to go on living -- so they moved.

Ridiculously simple, huh? The river runs dry, you pack up and look for one that’s still wet. There are ruins all over the Southwest near dry rivers. There are also ghost towns where the mines failed, or the new highway system passed them by. Route 66 leads you to lost civilizations.

As for the disappearing people -- there are people everywhere. In the 1300s, settlements all over the continent were abandoned. At the same time, cities sprang up in other places. No UFO motherships were required to bring in new populations. We don’t need theories about sci-fi or supernatural explanations for the ghost towns of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The people just moved.

It still happens. Where Em and I live in the Metro Phoenix Area, there are a lot of empty houses. The people who used to live in them looked Mayan and spoke Spanish. Our local sheriff waged a public campaign to make them leave. Now the local economy is failing.

When the Maya move, they leave dead cities in their wake. Meanwhile, Mayan-looking people are showing up all over the United States of America. They didn’t come in flying saucers.

Then again, we do see a lot of UFOs in these parts, Kemo Sabe.

MYSTERIES OF THE MAGICIAN KINGS

January 6. Epiphany. You know, the days the Three Wise Men showed up at that manger with some frankinscence and myrrh. In the Spanish-speaking world they're called Los Reyes Magos, which translates to the Magician Kings, which creates a different characterization.

There is a resemblance to Santa Claus, but not the Wild Man. Their story is all about a strange light in the sky. They are men of knowledge from the "East" as the Bible says.

But why is one of them an African? African royalty is an iconic presence in Hispanic folklore. Though, on occasion, an actual black man plays the role, we usually see a lot of blackface, Max Factor, traditional minstrel, and even Renaissance/Hieronymous Bosch coal-black skin with blue lips.

The parades often look like Mardi Gras/Carnival with Fat Kings on floats throwing goodies to the crowd. Generous monarchs sharing the wealth. Come to think of it, they do kind of look like Karl Marx.

Though they look like they may have come from the unnamed African city of magicians that was the home town of the villain of the tale of Aladdin's Lamp, Wikipedia seems to think they came from Yemen, which isn't East of Bethlehem, either. Do they have Al Qaeda connections?

I keep ending up with more questions than answers. Like why did they give a baby two essential ingredients of a do-it-yourself mummification kit? Guess I'll keep investigating. Meanwhile, there's a lot silly entertainment for the children.

FAREWELL,LITTLE MASTER OF THE UNIVOISE!

Funny how time changes your perspective. When I was a kid, the Genie in the Sabu version of Thief of Bagdad scared the crap out of me. Rex Ingram (the African American actor, not to be confused with the Irish Rex Ingram who directed movies and wrote the incredible bullfighting novel Mars in the House of Death) just blew me away with his booming voice and diabolical attitude. Over the years I grew to like him more, until, these days, I admire and identify with him.

In more viewings of the film than I can count, I realize that the Genie is the most interesting and most important character. He had an agenda. He didn't just want to be freed from the bottle and his slavery, he wanted cosmic revenge. He manipulated Abu/Sabu into stealing the All-Seeing Eye of the mysterious unnamed goddess, blinding her to the doings of humanity for ten thousand years. When it is done, he is delighted.

I've often wondered, did that crime damn or free us? After the ten thousand years are up, will the goddess like what she sees with her new eye? When he yelled "Farewell, Little Master of the Univoise!" where did the Genie go and what did he do?

And why do I feel like him?

For the last decade, I've spent most of my time in Big Box, being Mr. Customer Service. It wasn't bad. I earned an honest living, and learned some hard realities about being an artist and writer in our global civilization. Now that it's over, fate has allowed me to pursue my own interests and my own agendas.

You shouldn't spend your entire life serving the Little Masters of the Universe. You should break out and do your own thing if you can. Do your damnedest to gore the matador. It's what aesthetics, spirituality, and life are all about.

I hope to achieve that Genie's attitude. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to laugh like Rex Ingram.

BACKING INTO NANOHUDU, MARTIAN MARIACHIS, AND VAMPIRE CACTUS

Theme & Variations a podcast anthology of science fiction with musical themes edited by Michelle Welch became available during my recent computer outage. It features my story “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars.”

It first appeared the April 2001 issue of Analog -- about a guy working as a janitor on a Mars colony. The corporation in charge tries to use him to manipulate the workers. Paco has his own ideas, and so does the nanohudu that’s doing the terraforming on the molecular level.

This wacky idea started back when Em & I got involved with some people who were experimenting with making videos. This junkie showed up who claimed to have contacts in Hollywood, and soon had us wasting a lot of time coming up ideas for movies. We met a guy who knew a lot of cowboy/stunt men who needed work. I had a blurry vision of a sort of spaghetti Western passing off Arizona as Mars with a lot of low-budget Road Warrior-type stuff.

The so-called production company crashed and burned. I sold my first two novels. Em & I went for lots of walks in the mountain preserve behind her Mom’s house. My brain entertained itself by making the landscape into something Martian.

Then I couldn’t sell my third novel – hell, Nueva York and me never got along – I got depressed, started listening to everybody about how to write the sort of thing that they will buy. I took the Mars stuff that was cooking in brain, and instead of the simple, Flash Gordon-ish adventure I first envisioned, I tried to make it into the grand epic that everybody assured me was the only kind of science fiction that would sell.

The problem was, I hated it. I struggled with world building, drew pictures of NeoMartian creatures, did some sample chapters and an outline, but that monster never got up off the slab. And Nueva York rejected it.

I shelved the mess, Em & I got by cleaning houses and sweeping classrooms. We did illegal alien work and listened to ranchera radio, saw how music disconnected from the corporate infrastructure affects people’s lives.

One day, while washing windows in Sun City, I felt a biting pain. I had backed up into a cactus. When Em pulled the spines out of my butt, I was amazed at how big they were. They looked like long fangs. The NeoMartian world in my brain stirred. The vampire cactus was born.

Yes, sometime inspiration literally bites you in the ass.

Over the next few years, as I sucked up dust, bits and pieces of my aborted novel rearranged themselves without much help from my conscious mind. I felt like a mariachi, doing the dayjob, making my “music” when I could. Paco Cohen came to life out of the ashes of that aborted novel. And the NeoMartian world keeps eating away at me. I’m working on a sequel. And the original, straight-up, adventure story keeps after me.

BABY JESUS, MATADOR

Tauromaquias.com keeps amazing me. When I saw the cartoon of baby Jesus fighting a bull in the manger, I wished that is was a Christmas card. I put it on my Facebook page. Avant-garde artists and angry satirists wrack their brains trying to come up with stuff this outrageous, yet this is not meant to be outrageous, just a subculture putting its own stamp on a holiday.

We keep hearing about how, in this age of globalization, Hollywood has conquered the planet, and North American notions of political correctness are universal. Yet there are still quaint local traditions that can make those who swear they believe in "tolerance" act line lynch mobs.

We hear a lot about religious freedom, but suggest a simple Aztec blood ritual or a bit of good, honest voodoo, and people want to call the police. It makes me laugh.

Humans are so wonderful. And twisted.

I never dreamed that in South America, child bullfighters would be so popular, and this activity would be considered a Christmas-kind of thing. If you identify the Child Jesus with the matador, the archetypes clash and waves of transformation radiate through human consciousness, and yes, the very fabric of reality. Is the bullfighting salvation? Then what is the bull? Our sins? Is the ritual more than has ever been perceived?

Even though I'm obsessed with La Fiesta Brava, I must admit that kiddie tauromaquia gives me the same queasy feelings I get from child beauty pageants and prepubescent college students. A kid may be able to learn to perform brain surgery, but I wouldn't let one open my skull.

Still, I applaud this manifestation of the human spirit. When we celebrate, no matter what we think we celebrate, we awaken some primal things. Truths emerge and frolic, no matter what kind of camoflauge the unnatural act called civilization puts on them.

Besides, it's not much weirder than the American consumer orgy, with people running amok like piranha with credit cards. Would Jesus feel at home with either ritual?

So Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you choose. And be careful with spirituality. It'll gore you if you give it a chance.

RAW FEED FROM THE BLAST ZONE

I haven’t posted anything here in a few weeks. I am still alive. Do not believe the rumors that Emily and I were kidnapped by Lemurian terrorists. The Olmec Yakuza had nothing to do with it either. Honest.

It was just another computer meltdown. Nothing special, it’s happening to a lot of people. Em went into detail about it on her blog, so I don’t have to do that here.

So, we’re hurtling into another decade and it’s looking apocalyptic as all hell. The times they are a-changing, my friends. Then, the times are always changing. It’s the nature of the beast, though the Maya would call it a burden.

Rest assured, I’m okay. Em, too. Fangs gleaming, the gods have smiled upon us. We will no longer be bookstore clerks. We have a new computer set up. We have decided to start living the way we want to.

The sacrifices we’ve made are paying off.

The final days in the bookstore biz will be rough, so will dealing with the switch to Mac, but the future looks bright.

Yeah, I know a lot you think this kind of optimism is sick, but a lot the stuff that’s crashing down around us needs to die. New things are being born. By 2020, it will truly be a different world.

Meanwhile, I’m fumbling around, trying to get my new life in order. Soon I’ll be able to tell the inside story of the Bookstore Holocaust, and offer insight into the Publishing Apocalypse. I’ll be taking my nefarious plans off the shelf, dusting them off, and putting them into action.

And then things just hit me. With the new computers, I not only have the facilities for self-publishing, but my own recording and animation studio. As that was sinking in, while I was helping Em get her books for her return to college, I realized that with a little more time and effort, I could get a degree in Archeology or Anthropology . . . I’ve been playing the amateur for years, as a famous wise guy who blew his brains out a few years ago said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

I feel like for the last decade, I’ve been hanging out in querencia, like a bull bristling with banderillas, bleeding, and weary from the fight. Now I feel recharged. Think I’m gonna hold my horns high, rush out, and gore the matador.

DEATH IN WINTER AFTERNOONS

Arrrgh! My usual sources for bullfighting news and video ABC.es and Burladero.com have run short on new stuff. The season is over, the weather is cooling off in the Northern Hemisphere. You need El Sol for a proper bullfight.

. . . though the idea of one taking place in a snow-filled arena, with the bull exhaling clouds of steam as his body heat and blood vaporizes the white powder is appealing. It would have to be a bull designed for a subzero climate. Perhaps with some reconstituted Ice Age bull genes spliced in. This may end up in a story . . .

Luckily, it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere. A bit of searching had me happily discovering Tauromaquias.com, a Peruvian website that will get me through this winter, when I’m going to have to survive working through the Great Retail Meltdown of 2009. It will be a struggle to stay civilized, and I’m going to need serious diversion to keep my savage mind from running amok.

Not only is there the usual news, photos, and video, but access to complete Peruvian television programs, blogs by both bullfighters and aficionados, and links that will take me months to explore. Oh boy! A portal to another world! It’s like finding a news site direct from Mars!

Already, I’ve discovered Milagros Sanchez the latest female torero, and boy wonder Michelito Lagravere.

Also, South American bullfighting has a different feel from the Spanish. In Spain, it’s all very dignified, with the royal family looking on and preliminary rituals that look like something out of the Middle Ages. In South America, it’s more rough and tumble. In one video, it seemed like it was all the entire torero crew could do to keep the bull from breaking down the arena walls and eviscerating the audience. It’s like classical versus rock and roll.

Not only does this sort of thing get my blood pumping, it makes me forget about the crap I had to participate in during the day: “I was only following orders! I’m only a clerk!”

And it inspires the hell out of me. Some wild science fiction and art will come out of this!

CHICANO IS A SCIENCE FICTION STATE OF BEING

Here I go explaining myself again. It’s what I get for being so complicated. My name is Ernest Hogan, and I write science fiction, and I’m a Chicano. Some of your heads started spinning when you read that.

I have reasons for preferring Chicano to the more popular Latino ( as in “sexy Latino star”) or Hispanic (as in “the suspect is Hispanic”).

Latino is the most globally inclusive term, derived from Latin America, that was coined by the French back when they had dreams of a non-English-speaking New World empire with a French-speaking elite. When you talk about the Latino world, you include Quebec, Haiti, and Brazil.

Hispanic is more specific, dealing with places and people that were touched and transformed by the Spanish Empire. It’s a step up from the days when anyone who spoke Spanish was considered a Mexican. Still it covers the majority of the Americas, and parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

So, I call myself a Chicano, even though it was once an insult, very much like “nigger.” It literally means “bastard Mexican.” It was originally what Mexicans called Americanized Mexicans who lived on the wrong side of the border (the American side).

During the Sixties, in imitation of the Black Power movement, it was turned around into a term of pride. It also connects to a place and time. I am a Chicano, therefore I’m from the Southwest of the United States (AKA Aztlán, the Aztec homeland), and lived through the second half of the Twentieth Century. It puts me in both geographical and historical context. And it connects me with the Chichimecas, which is a generic term for the nomadic tribes of Aztlán, who eventually became the Aztecs.

But what about the Irish name? Yeah, I’ve got a cowboy from Cork, Ireland in my family tree. And that actually makes me more, not less Chicano. To be Chicano is to be impure, polluted, a mongrel. Add something to the mix, you become more Chicano.

Which brings me to science fiction and visions of the future.

Have you noticed that if you take someone from India, the Middle East, or anywhere on the tropical zones of the planet where people have brown skin, teach them a little English, dress them in American clothes, put them in an urban environment – they become Chicanos!

When you’re a mixed-up stranger in a mixed-up strange land, you are a Chicano. You don’t need the Spanish language, or a Hispanic heritage, or any Latino connections. You don’t even need brown skin. Hell, you could even have blue eyes!

Here in the Twenty-First Century, globalization is making Chicanos of us all. The interface between you and your world is volatile and unstable – a recombocultural witch’s brew out of which bubbles brave new mutations and abominations. If you want an example, just look into a mirror.

I’ve had half a century’s head start on this. If you need any advice, let me know.

RE-THINKING THE FATE OF THE SHORT STORY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Way back in another millennium, in a magazine called Science Fiction Eye, in an essay called “Guess Who’s Killing the Short Story,” I predicted the end of the short story.

A few years ago, I thought my prediction had come true. It looked like the only people who read short stories started doing it the day after they decided they wanted to write them. And a lot of people were writing stuff along the lines of: The Day I Almost Let My Hair Down – And Thank God I Changed My Mind.

So, why is it now, I’ve sold one short story, have another soon to be podcast, sent off another to a waiting editor, and am finishing still another to another editor?

For those of you who have been taking part in a sensory-deprivation experiment for the last few years, a whole lot of change has gone on. We are witnessing the Apocalypse of the Bookstores, soon we will see the Great Publishers Die-Off, and then it's the End of New York as the Center of the Publishing Universe (in a decade or so, that city will only be known as an Atlantis-like fable).

Of course, this will be hard on writers, but then we’re always swimming neck-deep in inky, candiru-infested waters. I feel sorry for my colleagues who were doing well in the last decade. But then, as Henry Cabot Henhouse III said, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!”

So, how is it that I’m suddenly doing a ridiculous amount of short story biz, amid all this turmoil?

Shortly after writing the “Killing” essay I really did try to give up writing short stories. Then I was unable to interest publishers in my novels, since Sci-Fi as Nerd Lit had become the official policy. When I decided to try again, I no longer thought of them as Literary Art, but Entertainment Modules.

Then the landscape shifted. New media and corporate collapse are bringing about the end of publishing as we knew it – and actually, it’s not a bad thing. For those of you who haven’t been struggling with the business, it’s sucked for a long time. There are no good old days here. It’s never been a good time to be a writer.

And with the shifts and upheavals, a new world is forming. People want entertainment that is an alternative to the corporate megaproductions, stuff that comes at them through cracks from the emerging society. Places are popping up where I can sell and promote my wacky Entertainment Modules.

And in the world of texting and e-mail, the skills of a writer (and artist), honed over some hard decades, come in handy.

It all makes me feel more like a professional and less like a guy with a bizarre addiction that he’s disguising as a hobby. And if more money starts coming in – look out.

THEME, VARIATIONS, AND THE MARIACHIS OF MARS

The world is in turmoil. Looks like the times they are a-changing, as we used say way the hell back when. It looks kinda apocalyptic, but I’m not worried. Like my wife, Emily, I don’t believe in the end of the world – it’s just change, you make some adjustments and go on.

As usual, I find myself hurtling ass-over-tea-kettle into a new frontier . . .

Theme & Variations a podcast anthology of science fiction with musical themes edited by Michelle M. Welch is now online. A new science fiction story on MP3 about music will become available every week for eight weeks. Maybe one of the stories – or hopefully, the whole anthology – will achieve my mad dream of science fiction that makes people want to get up and dance.

Mine will be the last, available on December 16,“The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars.” It first appeared the April 2001 issue of Analog -- about a guy working as a janitor on a Mars colony. The corporation in charge tries to use him to manipulate the workers. Paco has is own ideas, so does nanohudu that’s doing the terraforming on the molecular level.

Michelle put in some great blues by Jack Mangan to make it rock.

This is my second podcast, though my first in English, after the Russian one of "Coyote Goes Hollywood." I’d really like to hear from someone in Russia someday. Is anybody really using it for a ringtone?

I’d really like to know.

Meanwhile you can catch the rest of the Theme & Variations stories. I hope that somebody gets up and dances.

Wouldn’t it be great if science fiction could someday make the whole world get up and dance?