High Aztech Ernest Hogan Books
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HIGH AZTECH, the underground cult classic, is back and ready to blow your mind wide open. “A high-energy adventure peppered with great ideas, well-imagined unusual settings, outlandish characters, and a wicked sense of fun.’. –Locus In mid 21st century Mexico, Tenochtitlán, the metropolis formerly known as Mexico City, is the most exciting place on Earth. Stainless steel pyramids pierce the smoggy sky. Human sacrifice is coming back into fashion, especially on the new Aztechan TV channels, and everyone wants an artificial heart. Xolotl Zapata, celebrated poet, skeptic and trmrhsfr journalistr, starts receiving death threats from a cult he's lampooned in a comic book. But soon he will have much worse problems and be running for his life. The government, the Mafia, street gangs, cults, terrorists, even garbage collectors will be after him. Why? He has been infected with a technological development that will changing human life as we know it Zapata is carrying a virus that can download religious beliefs into the human brain - a highly contagious virus that is converting everyone he meets, and everyone they meet, to the Aztec religion. This is Witnessing with a PUNCH! Since he's a virtulent carrier he infects a large part of the city all by himself, and the masses, filled with visions and portents, await the End of the World. “Cyberpunk is the combining of science fiction and technology with a future society on the brink of self-destruction. Ernest Hogan takes the concept a step further, blending in his love of the Aztec’s ancient beliefs and civilization to produce very unique and gripping stories. When it comes to science fiction of a different breed, Hogan is definitely sitting in the front row. One reviewer aptly referred to Hogan as a “mad Mexican Hunter S. Thompson.”” -Wicked local.com “Chicano writer Ernest Hogan bridges the gap between hard science fiction and cyberpunk … interweaving Pre-Colombian mythology and Spanish, Spanglish, and Nahuatl language into a humorously dystopian sci-fi context … exploring the intersection of religion, technology, pop culture … with a distinctly Latino twist.” -- The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature
High Aztech Ernest Hogan Books
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the March 25, 2016 edition of The MonitorIn the early 1990s, a Chicano from East L.A. published a pair of science fiction novels that would go on to receive considerable critical acclaim and make significant inroads into the genre for Latinos everywhere.
Hewing more closely to weird, gonzo pulp fiction and comics than to the more politically active realism preferred by the Chicano intelligentsia, he was for many years unknown to his hermanos literarios. The culturally embedded nature of his narratives likewise made him less palatable to mainstream readers of sci-fi. Both of these oversights are gradually being corrected. Soon Ernest Hogan will be recognized as an essential, revolutionary voice.
By the late 1980s, Hogan had published several stories in Analog and other professional markets, and this success encouraged him to submit a manuscript to author Ben Bova, who was curating at the time a series of novels by up-and-coming writers for TOR. Their resulting negotiations produced in 1990 what is likely the first Chicano “hard sf” novel ever: the widely hailed Cortez on Jupiter.
Two years later, Hogan followed his debut up with the cyberpunk masterpiece High Aztech.
The story line is set in the year 2045, in a Mexico City that has returned to its ancient name of Tenochtitlan, the capital of a country to which Americans now flock due to the decline of the United States. This migrant flood complicates the revival of the Aztec religion, as Christian groups vie with indigenous Mexican beliefs, leading to the creation of biological virii that infect human minds with the ideology of one faith or the other. Xólotl Zapata, a renegade cartoonist, is the carrier of the Aztec virus, and he soon finds himself pursued by multiple groups hoping to stop the ascendancy of Mexico. Yet their plan to cancel out his infection with their own has consequences that they could never have imagined.
Now, I’m going to be straight-forward about something: High Aztech is not an easy read. That’s a good thing, however. Hogan crafted a novel that rivals the bizarrely cryptic genre work of Burroughs or Lessing, that takes linguistic, philosophical, and structural risks along the lines of A Clockwork Orange.
The frame story is an interrogation of Xólotl, but his erratic, ADHD stream of memories is interrupted by commentary from observers, notes from field operations, and other creative techniques for widening the narrative net. While these choices mean we don’t get as much character development and depth as perhaps traditional methods might achieve, for Hogan’s philosophical and politically speculative purposes, it’s a great fit.
Most spectacular, however, is the hybrid language with which Xólotl laces his responses to the interrogation. Called Españahuatl, this fusion of Spanish and Nahuatl (the indigenous Aztec tongue) is at times wildly funny and earnestly poignant, much like the “Nadsat” that Anthony Burgess once crafted.
Sadly, TOR pretty much abandoned the novel right after its publication, doing nothing to publicize a book that they clearly realized was more ethnic than they had expected. Fooled by his last name, many in the publishing world didn’t realize that Hogan was actually a Chicano (rather than a daring Anglo). His full-throated expression of Latino sensibilities within the frame of science fiction is only now being fully appreciated.
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High Aztech Ernest Hogan Books Reviews
Until the Warren Ellis comic "Transmetropolitan" came along, _High Aztech_ was about the only dollop of mirth in the painfully serious, painfully technophilic, and painfully misogynistic subgenre known as cyberpunk. The fact that the book isn't in print right now is more of an indictment of the lack of sense of humor in the genre right now than anything else. (Of course, the science, with the idea of a virus that can give anyone a good case of religion, is intriguing, and the idea of the old Aztec religion cropping up in a revitalized Mexico is absolutely fascinating. That's not the point. The point is that ol' Ernest takes the lunacy of fads and trends about as seriously as they deserve.)
If there were any justice anywhere, this book would be back in print with a publisher who cared about it, rather than seeing it dumped the way it was by Tor. Anyone interested in proving that there's life beyond _Neuromancer_?
For fans of creative cyberpunk and progressive sci-fi, Ernest Hogan demands to be discovered. Since 1990 he's only been able to publish three novels, and they're all fascinating combinations of up-to-the-minute technophilia with Latino and Aztec cultural elements. If you're reading this review, also be sure to check out Hogan's other two novels - "Cortez on Jupiter" and "Smoking Mirror Blues" (the latter is his strongest, in my opinion). Here in "High Aztech," Hogan produces the best projection of Aztec culture into a near-future sci-fi technical landscape - a few other writers have tried this, but with not nearly as much success or readability. Here, Mexico is rising in influence after the western powers have destroyed themselves, and Mexico City has been re-renamed Tenochtitlan during a revival of Aztec religion. This leads to all kinds of technical and theological subterfuge, culminating in a brain-warping virus carried by the main character. Most interestingly, Hogan adds some speculation on the information-processing nature of biological viruses, and some intriguing explorations of religious fanaticism. Like Hogan's other novels, this one is built on uproarious Spanish/Nahuatl slang and a plotline that zooms by with rip-roaring speed. Here the story gets a bit out of hand at times, with a few too many characters and plot elements flying by without getting the chance to sink in. That makes this novel slightly weaker than Hogan's other masterworks, but it still fits in perfectly with his small but bodaciously creative and entertaining body of work. If you're out there Ernest, give us some more! [~doomsdayer520~]
Ernest Hogan has a very special way of interweaving Aztec lore with popular culture, extrapolation of current trends and barrio language and idiosyncrasies. High Aztech allows the classic science fiction reader, who might not be not very knowledgeable of real Earth cultures, even though he/she can understand the politics and customs of Coruscant of Arrakis, an opportunity to get immersed in a very interesting and original milieu and even better story. Read this novel, you won't be disappointed.
A delightful satire of religious fanaticism, in fact fanaticism of every stripe, as protagonist Xolotl Zapata careens like a pinball between the various cultural, religious and criminal factions of a world-ascendant Tenochtitlán (aka Mexico City). Infected with one religious doctrine-believing virus after another, the ultimate solution just might be a reality-expanding embrace of them all. Very fun to read.
[There is at the end a glossary (totally not necessary) and a pronunciation guide, which might be useful if not knowing the correct pronunciation would be a distraction to you. I managed OK thanks to long ago high school Spanish.]
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the March 25, 2016 edition of The Monitor
In the early 1990s, a Chicano from East L.A. published a pair of science fiction novels that would go on to receive considerable critical acclaim and make significant inroads into the genre for Latinos everywhere.
Hewing more closely to weird, gonzo pulp fiction and comics than to the more politically active realism preferred by the Chicano intelligentsia, he was for many years unknown to his hermanos literarios. The culturally embedded nature of his narratives likewise made him less palatable to mainstream readers of sci-fi. Both of these oversights are gradually being corrected. Soon Ernest Hogan will be recognized as an essential, revolutionary voice.
By the late 1980s, Hogan had published several stories in Analog and other professional markets, and this success encouraged him to submit a manuscript to author Ben Bova, who was curating at the time a series of novels by up-and-coming writers for TOR. Their resulting negotiations produced in 1990 what is likely the first Chicano “hard sf” novel ever the widely hailed Cortez on Jupiter.
Two years later, Hogan followed his debut up with the cyberpunk masterpiece High Aztech.
The story line is set in the year 2045, in a Mexico City that has returned to its ancient name of Tenochtitlan, the capital of a country to which Americans now flock due to the decline of the United States. This migrant flood complicates the revival of the Aztec religion, as Christian groups vie with indigenous Mexican beliefs, leading to the creation of biological virii that infect human minds with the ideology of one faith or the other. Xólotl Zapata, a renegade cartoonist, is the carrier of the Aztec virus, and he soon finds himself pursued by multiple groups hoping to stop the ascendancy of Mexico. Yet their plan to cancel out his infection with their own has consequences that they could never have imagined.
Now, I’m going to be straight-forward about something High Aztech is not an easy read. That’s a good thing, however. Hogan crafted a novel that rivals the bizarrely cryptic genre work of Burroughs or Lessing, that takes linguistic, philosophical, and structural risks along the lines of A Clockwork Orange.
The frame story is an interrogation of Xólotl, but his erratic, ADHD stream of memories is interrupted by commentary from observers, notes from field operations, and other creative techniques for widening the narrative net. While these choices mean we don’t get as much character development and depth as perhaps traditional methods might achieve, for Hogan’s philosophical and politically speculative purposes, it’s a great fit.
Most spectacular, however, is the hybrid language with which Xólotl laces his responses to the interrogation. Called Españahuatl, this fusion of Spanish and Nahuatl (the indigenous Aztec tongue) is at times wildly funny and earnestly poignant, much like the “Nadsat” that Anthony Burgess once crafted.
Sadly, TOR pretty much abandoned the novel right after its publication, doing nothing to publicize a book that they clearly realized was more ethnic than they had expected. Fooled by his last name, many in the publishing world didn’t realize that Hogan was actually a Chicano (rather than a daring Anglo). His full-throated expression of Latino sensibilities within the frame of science fiction is only now being fully appreciated.
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