Ernest Hogan's Blog, page 21

REMEMBER RICK COOK!

That’s right, there’s an obnoxious exclamation point in the title. Like a command, or a battle cry. I’ve been around writers most of my life, and have long been appalled by what happens to them as they get old and die. Rick Cook was another writer whose health began to fail him, and eventually stopped him, just as he was beginning to achieve a long fought-for success.

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The cruelest thing is they usually get forgotten after they die. Wait a few years after the obituaries, then look for any sign of them. Most of us do not become immortal.

I first met Rick on one of my many trips to Phoenix while romancing Emily Devenport, who knew him from a local writer’s group. He thought my crazy ideas were interesting. I was impressed by his being able to make a living as a writer.

Granted, like most full-time writers, his money came through nonfiction, journalism and articles about computers and high technology, though, as he said on his Linkedin page: “Okay, I'll write about anything they'll pay me for.”

It was a hard, crazy life. He was always scrambling for gigs. He worked odd hours, round the clock, mostly at night.

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Sometimes Emily and I (after I moved in with her and we eventually got married) would join him at a Denny’s that would serve as a second office for him. He’d order an IV of iced tea, making the waitress laugh (they would just keep the glasses coming), and have a lot to say about writing, the weird state of the world, and otherwise being the personality that made him a fixture in fandom. He would also listen to our struggles as two broke, but publishing, writers. He was a friend, mentor, and cohort. Often these sessions would go on until dawn.

They eventually evolved into the Full Moon Club–an informal gathering on those moonlit nights because Rick’s wife Pati would be holding Wiccan meetings at their house, and astronomer/writer Peter L. Manly (he died a while back, anybody remember him?) couldn’t observe the heavens when the moon was up. Later we were joined by G. Harry Stine, Michael Stackpole, and some fans and aspiring writers.

It was fun and didn’t last very far into the 20th century. It also gave Emily and me front-row seats to Rick’s fiction writing career.

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It started with a multi-book deal with Baen Books. Out of this came Wizard’s Bane, the first of his popular Wiz Zumwalt series, Limbo System, and my personal favorite Mall Purchase Night. He also sold stories to Analog and a few other markets, most of which can be found on the Rick Cook (writer) Wikipedia page.

Oddly enough, one Analog story not mentioned there is Rick’s collaboration with me, Obsidian Harvest from the April 2000 issue, and The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighteenth Annual Collection. I’m in eternal debt to Rick for getting me into Analog and have to admit that the story was mostly his–I was along for my knowledge of pre-Columbian cultures and helping with the surrealistic dream sequences. It also gave me insight into Rick’s eccentric writing process that was influenced by being a reporter working with word processors: He would start with notes, ideas, scenes, usually not in order, later there would be a lot of cutting and pasting. My writing has been affected by it ever since.

Obsidian Harvest is a great story. I’m going to do what I can to get it back in print.

Meanwhile, I struggle along with my own writing career, as I get old, too. 

Thanks for the conversation and the inspiration, Rick.

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CHICANONAUTICA MEETS THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION

 

Chicanonautica  announces my being on The Reality Dysfunction, over at La Bloga.

One more new thing:

A podcast:

Born of the pandemic:

Talking about Chicano futurism:

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RUDY RAGES, GHOSTS GET JUICY

 

I started reading Rudy Rucker’s Juicy Ghosts in front of a Safeway pharmacy, waiting to see if my Covid booster shot was going to give me any side effects. This tale of Silicon Valley biohackers merrily running amok was just the thing to pass that time. As for side effects, I felt a little high for a couple of days, like I was at a party back in the old days and took a toke of whatever was being passed around.

The novel grew out of Rudy’s reaction to the political situation of the last few years, that last presidential administration, and what it did to America. Yeah, he wasn’t happy with Trump, and channeled his anger into writing. So, we get a book that begins with a presidential assassination and goes on into a revolution made possible by a new technology that save minds electronically and then plugs them back into bodies of various kinds. 

Like ghosts, but juicy. A solution to my complaint about science fiction tending to want to avoid the hot, throbbing, sticky stuff that makes life so wonderful. 

It takes place in what could be the present, but is kind of futuristic. Because the future always begins NOW!  “We wrote it while Watts was burning, man.” George Clayton Johnson about his bestselling, movie, and TV series-spawning collaboration with William Nolan, Logan’s Run.

The book made me nostalgic for cyberpunk, the New Wave, underground comix, and gives hope for the upcoming generation.

I not only highly recommend buying and reading Juicy Ghosts, but I'm recommending it not just to jaded old fans, like me, but to the kids. After years of dreary, formulaic YA dystopias, this is a welcome change.

And wait, could that be a vision of a hot and juicy, transhumanist utopia?

Maybe it is possible to change the world

As some young Parisians said in May, 1968 “Be realistic–demand the impossible.”

 

CHICANONAUTICA UPDATES ERNESTO 2022

Chicanonautica does a New Year’s update, over at La Bloga.

Getting into 2022:

I’m finishing a novel:

Which is like demonic possession:

Did I mention that it’s about artificial intelligence?

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HERE WE ARE, HERE WE GO

 

I like to pretend that the sign on the water fountain at work is a time machine. It took us through the entire 20th century, and got us into the new year a few weeks early. Then, it’s into the future.

Wheeeee! Like a zipline. Or is that a spider web? Gotta remember to take time to relax.

A sunflower looks like a mothership about to launch an armada of landing vehicles. Are they invaders? Colonizers? Explorers? Tourists?

Meanwhile, I hope we can be like the baby python who was left at a library backdoor, and eventually found a new home.

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CHICANONAUTICA READS TAIBO���S ���68

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:

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CHICANONAUTICA READS TAIBO’S ‘68

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:

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2021: A WTF ODYSSEY

And suddenly, 2021 is coming to an end. What? Already? Didn’t it just start?

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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.

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“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.

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CHICANONAUTICA REVELS IN MAYASPLOITATION

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:

 

FUN, RASQUACHE, AND EL PORVENIR, ��YA!

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.

 

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