AZTECH

Welcome to a new segment on Kingdoms of Evil from Dan the illustrious and illustrat-ious Thomas Duffy  and maybe even you.

Our last idea was so cool, Tom and I decided to make this a weekly thing, so every Wednesday I’ll post one of our conversations about cool sci-fi ideas. We love third opinions, so please give us your ideas in the comments and maybe they’ll be included in a future segment.

Here’s Tom on the subject of AZTECH

From Cities of Blood by Peter Ackroyd:

There arose many great cultures during this time—the Olmec, the Zapotec, the Toltec, the Maya, the Aztec, and the Inca. Some never had any contact with the outside world, living and dying unknown. Some still remain mysterious, the ruins of their cities hidden by vast jungles. But we known more about them now. They were based upon power and authority. They wanted to grow ever larger and, to this end, they were engaged in perpetual warfare. City fought against city, civilization fought against civilization. Warfare became an end in itself. (5)

–Imagine this exact same description, names and all, applying to conflict between civilizations on an interstellar rather than a regional terrestrial (Mesoamerican) scale.

Thinking that the Aztec “calendar stone” (Sun Stone), with the blood-drinking solar god Tonatiuh at the center, could be seen as a topdown view of the Milky Way’s galactic disc, with its supermassive star-devouring black hole at the core. The “five suns” (ages) of Aztec cosmology could then be variously interpreted as spiral arms, eras of imperial domination, capital systems, etc., as could the different calendrical and mythological glyphs. Could create an entire science fictional history/mythology just from the Sun Stone! I should look into this, somebody probably already has… : p

Maize deities, from The Ancient Aztecs:

• Xilonen (protected green ears when they first sprouted)

• Centeotl (guarded the corn as it ripened)

• Chicomecoatl (most significant corn goddess: “our sustenance…our flesh, our livelihood”)

–Thinking these would make good names for agricultural worlds

I love Tonatiuh as a black hole. There was a scifi book about time-travel and cross-time travel whose bad-guys were a technological civilization derived from the Aztecs. But aside from being super mean, I don’t remember much detail being given to their culture. Then there was the excellent Obsidian and Blood series by Aliette de Bodard, but that’s fantasy. So there’s room here to do something new.

The biggest hurdle here for me is getting the Aztecs into space in the first place. Perhaps they had the help of some ancient astronauts? I’ve recently been thinking about telling a sci-fi story set in a world where Forteana were actual fact.

Of course, Pacal was Maya, not Aztec, and lived in the 7th century AD, long before the Aztecs started their Triple Alliance in the 1400s. So how to bridge the gap? Perhaps this is an alternate timeline where the the new Emperor Motecuzoma II receives a strange codex as tribute from the frontier city of Tochtepec. The codex describes a “rising temple” in the abandoned city of Palenque, deep in the jungles of Maya territory. Motecuzoma doesn’t find the codex significant, but the high priest of Tonatiuh, repository of the secret lore, knows the true nature of the Calendar Stone: it is a map of a galactic empire of staggering antiquity and power. The priest sets out on an expedition into the jungle, desperate to access the ancient starship before it can fall into the hands of rival factions from Tenochtitlan, Mayan revolutionaries, or the vile and Alien Spaniards. 

The other option would be to tell a story about modern archaeologists stumbling upon the secret, but that’s awfully star-gate. Also, the Aztec triple alliance was never an ancient empire, and it makes more sense to cast them as the up-and-coming heroes against the ancient Maya and the alien Spanish.

The Aztecs could use the starship to gain access to weapons they can use to beat back Spain (or perhaps launch their own invasion of Europe), but there isn’t much time for godlike technology to percolate back to Tenochtitlan, wracked by disease, rebellion, and starvation as it is. I think Cortez still takes the city, but he arrives just days behind the refugees flee and Motecuzoma sets up a court-in-exile on the fertile planet of Xilonenan. There evolves a sort of underground railroad ferrying Mexica people out from under Spanish dominion, a railroad the Spanish trace to Palenque, where they discover the starship. Word gets out to the rest of the world.

NOW it’s the Age of Exploration on steroids plus the Space Race plus the Cold War. All the world’s powers are pouring their armies and explorers through Palenque and coming back with unimaginable riches, miracles, and weapons.  This also opens up the idea for a very cool story of colonization and conquest across the galaxy-spanning ruins of the Ancient Astronaut civilization (whatever that might be).   But the Aztec Empire in Exile has become strong in hiding, and they are ready to push back to Earth and reconquer their lost land.  And what happens if the Ancient Astronauts aren’t quite as extinct as people assume? Lost civilizations in spaaaace!

So that’s like, what, three books at least, right?