Chicanonautica reviews Paco Ignacio Taibo II memoir of the student protests, and Tlatelolco massacre, at La Bloga.
They took place in 1968:
It was a big deal:
It’s a struggle to keep it in official memory:
Real life goes beyond the horrors
of fictional dystopias:
And suddenly, 2021 is coming to an end. What? Already? Didn’t it just start?
It’s been another year, and as the pandemic goes on I’m vaccinated and boosted, and the City of Phoenix has given me money for it. Who knows how long it will go on? How many variants are coming?
I’m having trouble keeping track of it all. I had to scroll through this blog to jog my overloaded memory, forgetting a few passwords in the process.
We did a lot of traveling again. Things just happened that way, the gods of the road guiding us. It may not be the same next year, with Emily working again, and things being different. The Angel of Death is no longer perched on our roof. And Maggie, Em’s mom is traveling through time and space.
Meanwhile, my writing career is alive and well and interrupting my plans. I’m getting interviewed on Zoom, learning to be more of a pro at it. A new world is forming in the chaos.
Starfaring, Ken St. Andre’s space opera role-playing game that I illustrated with cartoons was republished, with the cartoons. The past never dies. Especially in the age of the internet.
“Love Nwatta-Nwatta-Nwatta Style” that was inspired by the Starfaring cartoons was reprinted in Metastellar: Speculative Fiction and Beyond. Who knows? Maybe I’ll someday find a market for the novel that it’s excerpted from.
Within the week, the Kickstarter for El Provenir, ¡Ya! Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl, A Chicano Science Fiction Anthology failed. My feeling is that this was probably the exactly wrong time to be tin-cupping it. The world is in turmoil, everyone is begging for alms. The book will be coming out, though, thanks to some alternative resources. It will have a new story by me, “Incident in the Global Barrio.”
Meanwhile, I still haven’t finished Zyx; Or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin, but I am hurtling toward a bizarre, complicated climax. I have a lot of days off next week that I plan to spend working on it, while America, and the world, continue the process of transmogrification.
As for 2022, all I see is a big, fat question mark.
Chicanonautica review the novel Mayan Calendar Girls, at La Bloga.
A lot of people have the wrong idea about the Maya:
And their calendar:
These days, things are different in Mayalandia:
And then, there's dolphin sex:
So why should you donate to the Kickstarter for El Porvenir, ¡Ya!, the first Chicano Science Fiction Anthology? Does the world need such a thing? What’s in it for you?
Might as well ask me why I’ve devoted so much of my life to writing the crazy stuff that earned me the title of Father of Chicano Science Fiction. I could tell you that I want to change the world and/or make Great Art. I’ve said such things when the audience is right, but now—or should I say ¡Ya!—it’s time to be honest.
I do it because it’s fun. Writing this stuff, publishing it, having it published, having it read, and hearing that people enjoy it, makes me feel better that I should be allowed to.
There’s something about the volatile reactions that happen when I plug sci-fi into my Chicano imagination. We call it rasquache, the wild and wonderful magic on how Chicanos put things together that isn’t “normal” and create our own worlds. It isn’t something I aspired to, it’s what I am.
And having read El Porvenir, ¡Ya! in advance, so I could write the preface, I’m happy to report the anthology is brimming over with astounding sci-fi rasquache. There’s near future extrapolations,rip-snortin’ space opera, time travel (we are all about history, which is where the future begins), post-apocalypses, alternate universes, and things that don’t fit into the usual categories.
Not fitting in to the usual categories is a Chicano thing, but you don’t have to be one to enjoy this book.
So, please, donate what you can, and spread the word.
And who knows, it might even change the world, make Great Art, and a rasquache future.
Chicanonautica announces the winners of the 2021 Extra Fiction Contest, over at La Bloga.
The contest was for Latinoid writers:
Monster movie madness rears it’s ugly head:
Along with folkloricopunk:
And we’re getting professional:
