by Ernest HoganSeems I can’t do anything without it causing controversy. Though the overwhelming reaction to the cover of Digital Parchment’s new edition of Cortez on Jupiter had been positive, there has been some objection to Pablo Cortez being depicted as a futuristic conquistador.
I understand people’s reaction to the symbolism. The conquistador in his helmet is seen as a villain while the “pioneer” (originally from the French for “foot soldier” as in “peon”) in his coonskin cap is idolized a hero. But as my great-grandfather Hogan said about the Wild West, who the good guys and bad guys are depends on who’s in charge at the time.
I like the cover. It's similar to an idea I had when the first edition was in the planning stages. The conquistador I envisioned was more of an H.R. Giger monster, but this new one is more commercial -- doing the important job of catching the eye of cybershoppers and getting them to read the synopsis.
A good book cover makes people think, “What the hell?”
Also, in way, Pablo Cortez is a conquistador. He conquers, not Jupiter, but the society he lives in.
Like it or not, as Hispanics/Latinos/Chicanos/Nican Tlaca we carry conquistador DNA. Otherwise we’d be Indians. It’s our whole hijo de la chingada thing, or as my grandmother once so delicately put it:
“The soldiers would come into the villages, and take the girls away on their horses . . . and then they would be their wives!”
We live in a world they made -- especially here in Aztlán, where we walk in their footsteps, and the extermination of the natives was not complete, the difference between Nueva Hispana and New England.
As I wander like Don Quixote seeking adventures or like the Aztecs searching for the place to build their metropolis, I often feel like a doomed warrior on an absurd mission in an alien land. Though I do identify more with Cabeza de Vaca and Estevanico than Cortés, Pizarro or Aguirre.
Hmm . . . Was Columbus a conquistador? He was working for the same bosses.
It’s given me ideas that I may never get around to writing:
What if space explorers acted like conquistadors rather than idealistic bureaucrats?
What about a badass mestizo gunslinger who wears a conquistador helmet?
Or an Aztec anti-conquistador, going to Europe to deconstruct their culture?
Ernest Hogan’s Cortez on Jupiter is available for pre-order for a new Kindle edition with new cover and introduction. There will be a softcover edition, too. Stay tuned for details as they develop.
A critic once described my style as “shakycam” -- as in low-budget documentaries shot with hand-held cameras in close, dangerous quarters. It wasn’t intended as a compliment, but does describe what I do as well as how I write.
I know I have a writing career because, like Frankenstein’s monster, it has taken on a life of its own. I keep losing track of it. I have to check my blog to make sure. Keeping up with it gets shakycam.
Take these items from my to-do list:
I’ve been (with the help of my wife) getting my novel Smoking Mirror Blues ready to become an ebook. We finally got through the final go-over and sent it off to the formatter. Tezcatlipoca willing, it may be available around Día de los Muertos.
That done, I started the tedious task of scanning my novel High Aztech -- like Cortez on Jupiter, it was written back in the Ninteen-Hundreds on an ancient mechanism called a typewriter. Not only that, but because of the Españahuatl slang, I’m probably the only human being on the planet who can do the necessary proofreading. I’m in for some fun times in the next few months!
I’m also working on a science fiction short story and a novel about bullfighting. The short story may end up as part of the novel in the end, but it actually creates more work for me.
I’ve decided to put my fantasy novel about the preColumbian ball game aside for a while because, if you haven’t guessed, I’m kind of busy. And I can’t let that cam get too shaky.
And I finally got a chance to do a collection of my short fiction. This is going to one desmadre of a project! It will include works from the typewriter era that will have to be scanned, and will be a twisted thirty-year journey through the strange things that grew in my mind, and the strange places where they got published. Trying to read it in one sitting will probably cause hallucinations and brain damage.
Imagine what putting together that document will be like!
When going over my list of published stories, I realized that there were some that will have to go in other volumes. “The Frankenstein Penis” and its sequel have a still-growing number of true stories connected to them. Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars, and Victor Theremin, the science fiction writer who has lost track of where science fiction ends and his life begins, also demand their own books.
And after crossing a few things off my to-do list, I remembered something I had to add to it. Better get to work.
Ernest Hogan really is doing all that stuff. Being a Chicano makes it more complicated and exciting. It’s also very shakycam.
[As always, winners of book give-aways on La Bloga are invited to submit guest posts, including reviews of the book they won. Below is a submission from one of the winners of an Ernest Hogan book. – La Bloga]
Over the years, I have become a fan of Ernesto's work and was disappointed to find out how hard it is to get copies of his "Ben Bova Presents" books. Through Facebook, I learned about Ernesto's interview on La Bloga.
The interview itself was fascinating and I really enjoyed learning how he brought his Chicano roots into his science fiction. Finding out that there was an opportunity to win one of Ernesto's books was a bonus. I entered the contest and was thrilled to learn that I'd won a copy of Cortez on Jupiter.
My great-grandparents were farmers in New Mexico. My grandparents and parents grew up there. Even though I grew up in San Bernardino, California, I always thought of New Mexico as my home turf.
Although I've long enjoyed science fiction, I always had a difficult time finding contemporary "literary" fiction I really enjoyed. About ten years ago, I shared executive director duties of the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces with Denise Chávez. Denise introduced me to such writers as Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya, and Luis J. Rodriguez. These were contemporary writers I could relate to. I may not be Latino, but these writers spoke my language culturally.
What excited me about winning Cortez on Jupiter was the prospect that it blended the science fiction that I love with the culture that I live. What I most enjoy about science fiction is that it's intrinsically a hopeful literature, even when it paints portraits of a dark future. Science fiction usually imagines that humans will somehow manage to survive into the future. Sometimes science fiction is cautionary, imagining pitfalls to avoid. Sometimes it imagines a bright future. However, the key is that humans survive and learn something in the process.
I saw Ernesto most recently at Coppercon, a science fiction convention which was held over Labor Day weekend in Mesa, Ariz. He gave me the copy of Cortez on Jupiter that I won and signed it for me on the spot. Since then, I've had a chance to read the novel and it did not disappoint. Ernesto tells the story of Pablo Cortez, a guerrilla artist from Southern California who, through a variety of circumstances, ends up on a mission to Jupiter to attempt contact with lifeforms found there. The future Ernesto depicts is neither especially bright nor dark, but it is essentially hopeful.
Suerte, 'Nesto. I'm in my own Closet of Discarded Dreams and everything coming at my face is blocking the view. So, I commiserate,
RudyG
It's overwhelming, but in a good way. The world seems to have finally realized that Chicano writers exist and are worth reading.