ALIEN CONTACT ON SALE NOW!

Buy it . . .

Read it . . .

Live it ...

CHICANONAUTICA DÍA DAZED AGAIN

Over at La Bolga, I've got a Chicanonautica for Día de los Muertos going. Here at Mondo Ernesto, I've got some extras that work Halloween/Muertos interface:

From Argentina, we have some kick-but exorcists that will make everyone forget about Linda Blair:

In other news, Puerto Rico is not immune to zombie infestation:

Meanwhile, at the Hollywood Cemetery:

And let's finish up with a Nahuatl blessing:

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WRITER BIZ FRONT

From just looking at this blog, you might get the idea that I've been spending most of my time wallowing in strange and obscure entertainment – not that that wouldn't be a bad life. Unfortunately, I'm more of a workboy than a playboy these days. Besides checking in, sorting, and shelving stuff (not just books) for the Phoenix Public Library at more than one location, the writer biz keep growing new heads and grotesque new appendages just when I think I've thwacked it into submission.

November 1^st is hurtling at us, Marty Halpern's Alien Contact anthology is coming out. I already have my contributor's copy where I can see my name listed among a whole lot of famous writers. Soon I'll be poking through the smoldering bookselling wasteland, hoping to see it for sale. I'll also be hyping it – though these days the word “pimp” is the more popular term.

I had hoped to have Cortez on Jupiter available as an ebook by now, but it's still in the final stages of all-important proofreading – something I've learned is extremely important in self-publishing. And there're all those wonder technical details I've been learning about. Talk about new life and new civilizations!

I'm also trying to get another ebook done, Obsidian Harvest, the Aztec dinosaur detective novella I collaborated on with Rick Cook. When Rick and I get to brainstorming, it can get wild. I'm not only coming up with a cover, but illustrations, and I'm having these visions of an animated book trailer that may take me into some truly dangerous territory.

Meanwhile, other writers are getting interesting and usual ebooks out. Cat Eldridge of The Green Man Review informed me about Neil Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples and Murder Mysteries. And others are popping up all the time. It shames me into getting back to work.

Then there's the ebookization Smoking Mirror Blues and High Aztech that folks are screaming for.

And, yes, I am still writing. I've got this poststeamppunk Pancho Villa - Nikola Tesla - airship -deathray thing that I keep getting distracted from. When I get back to it I've found that vision has changed, which has caused the story to go off in another direction. I end up chasing it through the apocalyptic landscape of our times.

Y'know, it's kinda fun.

CHICANONAUTICA , JESÚS HELGUERA, CALENDARS, POSTERS, CARS, AND SIDEWALKS

The latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga tells of how my search for an Aztec detective led me to the works of Mexican painter Jesús Helguera, whose classical images are known from being seen on calendars, posters, cars, and sidewalks.

Mexican art often finds a home in other places than the galleries and museums of the fine art world. Chicano art thrives in these populist venues. These products of popular culture often say more about us than is ever shown in them alta classe places.

I know that these horror movie posters say something to me, and probably reveal a lot about me:

My visions of – and life in – the Wild West look more like these than Hollywood's efforts:

There's something about the hand-painted signs of the world's barrios:

Lowriders with airbrushes often get inspired:

And even a tuba can be transformed by paint:

VICTOR THEREMIN HACKS AGAIN

I was looking over the stats for Mondo Ernesto, wondering why I was getting a lot of visits from Russia, the Netherlands, and the Ukraine lately, when my screen went black. Suddenly, flashing block letters scrolled by:

YOU BEEN HACKED, SUCKA!

Before I could reach over to turn my computer off, a cornball starfield appeared. Flaming letters in familiar handwriting spelled:

Hi Ernest, this is Victor Theremin. I've been having a wild time in the Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Russia. Wish you were here.

Then my computer restarted itself. A blinding light flashed outside my window. My eardrums popped. I did another restart, just in case.

HOUDINI VERSUS THE ROBOT-CONTROLED CORPORATION

It was another peculiar image that sent me on a decades-long quest: Houdini fighting with a robot. It was a clunky robot, but then it was from a silent movie. It was more than man-sized, but there also was a small, doll-sized version. Sometimes it carried a candelabra.

I first saw it on Jay Ward's experiment in pre-postmodernism, Fractured Flickers. What was this movie? I longed to see it. Someday.

Later I read about it in some Houdini biographies. It was The Master Mystery, a silent serial. There was even a novelization.

Houdini plays a Justice Department agent investigating a corporation that buys patents to keep the inventions off the market in order to extort big payoffs from established businesses who would have to compete with the new technology. A top executive's brain has been “transplanted” into an “automaton” – the robot who went by the name of Candlestick Parker in Fractured Flickers!

The automaton gives orders to a gang of thugs who keep putting Houdini into complicated death traps that he can escape from rather than simply shooting or stabbing him. Not very smart – but then they are following the orders of a corporate executive.

There's also a mind-paralyzing drug that the automaton used that candelabra to deploy, a heroine and a villainess who both fall in love with Houdini, a fake fortune teller, Fu Manchu/Yellow Peril Asians, a hypnosis machine, and an idol with heat ray eyes.

Sections are damaged and/or missing, entire chapters are synopsized, and it ends with the cliff-hanger of the penultimate chapter, making it look like the evil corporation triumphs -- just why is the world still hanging onto fossil fuels?

But it's still pretty damn entertaining.

I think this is because the complete story isn't the point. The appeal of serials isn't linear. They are slices of melodrama rather than life. The plot isn't as important as the delirious effect of the stream of mayhem that keeps titillating the audience before it has to go back to life in a fracturing world.

CHICANONAUTICA EXPLORES WILD WEST MEXICAN COMIC BOOKS

My latest Chicanonautica at La Bloga takes a look at the outrageous Mexican comic book Frontera Violenta.

Since I'm overdue returning to this popular subject – every day, people visit my other posts about it – here are some more examples from my collection, this time focusing on the western genre:

A long-time favorite is Aguila Solitaria (“Lone Eagle”), an Indian raised Tarzan-style by eagles, who wears wings that allow him to fly -- a Native American superhero out for ¡LA VENGANZA!

The most popular western Mexican comic book is El Libro Vaquero, that promises – among other things – “the most emotional stories of the Old West.”

This ad for El Libro Vaquero hypes “magnificent colors” and “the authentic cowboy flavor” in “the best magazine in Latin America.

Here's a blonde Indian warrior-princess beckoning us to read “true and authentic stories of the Legendary West.”

Something from the days of monochrome comics printed in a sepia ink that had a pungent uric acid smell when fresh. I never could make out the second word in the title, but it offers “intrepid and reckless gunmen and the most beautiful and sensual women.”

Another look at the mystery title. “The most intrepid and valiant men who forged the Legend of the West with the most beautiful women.”

Getting literary, here's a page from Novelas Inmortales No. 502, “El Jeque de Kalhuran” with Karl May's Old Shatterhand in Arabia, having a flashback to his days in Arizona with his Apache pal, Winnetou.

WHEN THE SON OF HERCULES WAS BLACK

I was on the lookout for the 1914 silent film Cabiria. It influenced Fellini – he named the heroine of his Nights of Cabiria after the title character. It was the beginning of the peplum, or sword & sandal, genre. It's also the first appearance of the muscular hero Maciste – whose origins seemed to be shrouded in mystery.

It lives up to its reputation. It's an action-packed adventure set during the Punic Wars in the Third Century. It starts with Etna erupting – most movies since have saved their volcanoes for the end. There's also Archimedes as a prototype mad scientist incinerating Roman ships with his solar-powered death ray. And of course Cabiria, still a little girl at this point, is taken to Carthage, where cultists try to sacrifice her to Moloch.

This incredible scene influenced Fritz Lang later in Metropolis, and may have even been in Allen Ginsberg's mind when he wrote his Beat Generation anthem, Howl.

Of course it is Maciste, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, who snatches Cabiria just before she can be inserted into the diabolical, flaming Moloch machine, stealing the show.

And once he showed up, the mysteries about his origins fell away.

His skin is dark. Very dark. It's makeup. I'd use the term “blackface,” but its all over his body, on every exposed muscle. He wears a leopard skin. He is the African slave of Fulvio “Fulvius” Axilla, a Roman gentleman hero who, in the Victorian tradition, has a loyal, hulking manservant to do the heavy lifting.

All the other slaves in the movie have the same paint job. It is said the D.W. Griffith was also influenced by Cabiria.

In the end – which takes place ten years after the beginning – it is Fulvius who Cabiria marries, while Maciste stands back and grins.

Maciste turned out of to be marketable. Bartolomeo Pagano played him in twenty-five films. IMDb says that he played the character in blackface in all of these, but he looks pretty white in Maciste in Hell, and in photos I've found online. Somehow, the movie's first black superhero turned white when he became popular.

This does add to Maciste's mystery. His adventures unfold in any place and time that the flimmakers see fit. He just shows up, like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, without a visible time machine. Could it be that besides superhuman strength and time travel, he can change race at will?

Later, in the Sixties, more Maciste movies were made. He was played by a number of well-developed white men.

But when they dubbed them into English, there seemed to be a problem with the name, Maciste. It must have sounded too “foreign” for the Anglo audience. It does kind of sound African, doesn't it? So he was Maciste only in a few, given other names for some, sometime he was even called Hercules. Or the son of Hercules.

They were even packaged as a Sons of Hercules series.

But I do wonder, if remake-crazy Hollywood decided to make a new version of Cabiria, what color would Maciste be?

CHICANONAUTICA MEETS XUANITO

This time Chicanonautica lets the Latino lit crowd at La Bloga know about "Xuanito," my story in the latest Flurb. I also celebrate my monster movie roots. And here's some Mondo Ernesto extras:

The theme some to the show that introduced me to many a monster:

These days, teenaged girls dream of romantic vampires, but teenaged boys have always been werewolves at heart.



I saw the dubbed versions of some on these on television in my youth. These days I'm inspired by the originals.



The classic Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman has had a barrio remake:



And everybody's favorite Latino monster has popped up in Brazilian production:

SHIFTING PRADIGMS AND FALLING METAPHORS AT COPPERCON

I arrived at CopperCon 2011 on Saturday afternoon. There were people milling around the halls. I saw some costumes – mostly steampunk, which in Arizona has spaghetti western flavor, rather than a slavish worship of corporate franchises. Funny, and kind of sad, how mundane hotel guests aren't shocked anymore.

I found Rick Cook talking about ebooks with a guy who “just prefers real books.” I've been hearing that lately, from a lot of people, especially science fiction fans, who, as usual, are resisting the future as it comes crashing down on them. They really need to read Rick's ebook, Shift Happens: The New E-Publishing Paradigm And What It Means for Authors.

The panel on online publishing mostly had writers and wannabees in the audience. That's the big issue: How do you get readers to find out about your ebooks? Looks like we're going to be forced out of our home offices and into the streets, or where ever . . .

Rick and I got to talk about the illustrations that I'm currently doing for the ebook of our novella Obsidian Harvest. Images for an Aztec dinosaur detective story take a lot of research. A guy can get distracted.

As I was driving the Crudmobile home, it started dying at intersections. I was lucky I made it home. Then it hit me: Here it is, a big, flaming metaphor dropping out of the sky – the old technology giving out just I was trying to go on with business as usual.

It'll happen for all or us. Soon. Hell, it's already started. Is there a Barnes & Noble in your town? Where do you get books these days?

The next morning we let the con know through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and phone that we may not make our Sunday-night panels. Fortunately, El Troque was in good working order, getting us both to our jobs that day and the con that evening.

I was twenty minutes late for the panel on where to find science sources. No other panelists had showed up, so the audience started without us. Yes, there are people who are interested in science out there. It was fun.

Em also found a DNA analyst and an astronomer to help her with a homework equation that was giving her trouble.

Monday, Em had a couple of panels, I got to hang out in the audience and think about where all this science fiction stuff is going.

We're still hearing a lot about the highly formulaic popular fiction of the past decade – paranormal romance, sexy vampires, etc. – and how that's the way to go, even though the format that they sold in – the good ol' mass market paperback – and the stores that carried them look doomed. In my last couple of years at Borders, I saw the sales of genre paperback melt away to nothing. Will they make the transition to ebooks? We'll have to see what happens in the next few years.

Steampunk is also big, not just as a fashion statement, but in fiction. I can recommend David Lee Summers' Owl Dance. Again, this is nostalgia for old futures, old technology. I guess I should finish my Pancho Villa airship story.

Ans now that it's over, I've got this long list of things to do, so I there's probably a future in this sci-fi stuff after all.