HIGH AZTECH IS BACK & READY TO BLOW YOUR MIND

 

Look out, civilization-as-we-know-it, High Aztech, "The Wildly Inventive Underground Classic . . . is back and ready to blow your mind wide open" via Kindle in a new Strange Particle Press edition produced by Digital Parchment Services.

There's a new cover and an introduction where I tell where it came from and reveal the controversy it spawned. With three illustrations by yours truly.

It's only $2.99, and free through Kindle Unlimited.

If that wasn't enough, a new paperback edition is in the works!

¡TICMOTRASPASARHUILILIS!

CHICANONAUTICA LOOKS BEHIND THE NEW HIGH AZTECH COVER

Chicanonautica gets into the artists and influences of the new High Aztech cover, over at La Bloga.

 Damn right, Diego Rivera was a BIG influence, on both the cover and the novel!
 

It's Aztec revival time, all over again!

And it's really happening, now!

 

Even in Australia . . .

  

 So, ticmotraspasarhuililis, amigo/as!

 

HIGH AZTECH: A NEW COVER

Here it is, the cover for the forthcoming Strange Particle Press edition of High Aztech, from Digital Parchment Services.

Now my literary rebellion looks like a classy book that intellectuals discuss in cafes and salons just before the rioting breaks out.

It's a collage that combines images from Diego Rivera's La Gran Tenochitlán mural with the cybervato from Dell Harris' painting Scorpio that I used for my self-published e-version (soon to become unavailable).

Big thanks to Jean Marie Stine and M. Christian, also Samantha Hursey, who created the design, and book designer Frankie Hill.

This is just the beginning – stay tuned for more exciting news!

ARIZONA SNOW GETAWAY

It does snow in Arizona.There are worlds beyond Phoenix, Arizona beyond the Valley of the Sun, up north, in the mountains, where it gets really cold and snows.

There was no sign of the elevator repairmen at work, again. Later, the computers went HAL-9000 on me. I was really ready when Emily picked me up and we headed for Sedona. Driving across Arizona at night looks like space travel – a dark void, flowing lights, stars. If only the roads we need aren't blocked. The motel room felt like a decompression chamber . . .

Snow . . . rain . . . breakfast at The Coffee Pot. Umm, buckwheat pancakes! We forgot to pack my jeans, so we bought some at a nearby thrift store. The red rock mountains with snow dusting are gorgeous – Sedona looks like downtown Shangri-La.

Cruised up Oak Creek canyon, through rain, into the snow until we started slipping in the snow . . .

Places we wanted to hike were closed and snow-covered. Finally we hiked, in the rain, at Midgely Bridge.

Got my boots and pants all muddy.

Had burgers – with pastrami and flaming hot – at P.J.'s Pub & Grill. Off season rainy/snowy Sedona was deserted, kinda post-apocalyptic, just me, Em, and a gaggle of blonde girls on the streets. A woman at a gem shop told us a snow storm was coming. We got set up to ride it out in the motel.

It snowed overnight! El Troque was covered with snow, including the truck bed, and it just kept coming down!

Had breakfast burritos at The Coffee Pot – a new favorite for me, though Em prefers the huevos rancheros.

Also took pics of the kachinas and a cowboy mural, and the snowflakes were nice and fat, showing their crystalline structure.

When they're wet, the colors of the red rocks become more intense. Clouds brush the mountains – Shangri-La-ish. Cloudy with a chance of yeti.

At Red Rock State Park, after an informative tour from Bob the naturalist, we finally got some serious hiking done, and even got hailed on. It kept transitioning from rain to snow and back.

On the ride back home, the sky was full of clouds like an armada of invading airships.

CHICANONAUTICA MAKES MANIFESTO SCENES

To kick off 2016, Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, is offering you a sneak preview of my Chicanonautica Manifestio, recently published in Aztlán.

Of course, the very idea of Aztlán freaks some folks out:

But others have a different vision of América:

You have to have faith, and a sense of humor:

And keep rocking that ancient wisdom:

FUTURISMS ARE US

Here it is, another year. We're further into the twenty-first century. Further into the future. 2001 seems like ancient history. So does ten years ago. Five years ago seems like another world.

And what about five years from now?

My interest in science fiction has always been fused with futurism. I cut my teeth on cheap, sleazy sci-fi productions that usually began with a nuclear explosion and a preamble about how, in a world of nuclear weapons, flying saucers, satellites, juvenile delinquents, and beatniks, anything was possible.

Or Chriswell's intro to Plan 9 from Outer Space:

"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives."

It's just as true now as it was then.

I just love the wild fantasies/ripped from todays' headlines connection. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away just doesn't pack the same punch. When you lose the futurism, it's just make-believe in funny clothes, a sanitized-for-your-protection safe zone.

One of my all-time favorite books is called Dangerous Visions.

In my adolescence, I was into Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan, as well as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Then around the time of the first moon landing, I read Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme and Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. My ideas of the future would never be the same.

Even though Ray Bradbury said that Toffler stole it all from every science fiction writer out there, Future Shock showed me that the future wasn't what they said it was back in the fifties. The Final Programme did the same thing in New Wave fictional form. “The future ain't what it used to be,” as Yogi Berra said, and it never is. It keeps changing, updating, mutating.

Back then, the future was a product cooked up by white guys in white lab coats who worked for Union Carbide, Monsanto, IBM or some other such corporation. We were expected to buy it like good consumers. No use in arguing -- here it is; live with it.

But that was a long time ago. Now we're in the age of Afrofuturism, Chicanafuturism, and other futurisms being born as you read this. It's like what William Gibson said about “the street finds its own uses for things.” Now it's not only finding its own uses, but inventing new things on its own.

Gibson also said that “The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed.” It used to be that if you wandered away from the world's overdeveloped hot spots, you were traveling back in time, but that has changed. The playing field isn't quite level, but the future can now come from anywhere, you're local ghetto/barrio, Mexico City,
Lagos,Timbuktu, Nairobi, Kathmandu, Hanoi . . .

And it's not about one, singular future. Futures and futurisms are busting out all over the planet – and maybe beyond. You can pick and choose. Support the futurism of your choice.

Or better yet, assemble some randomly selected parts and custom-build them into a recombocultural Frankenstein monster that will send shock waves through the universe.

After all, it is the rest of your life.