High Aztech (The "Gonzo"* Science Fiction of Ernest Hogan - Father of Chicano Science Fiction) Paperback – May 6, 2016

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.

Xolotl Zapata is not exactly road tripping, but rather being forced to trek across Tenochtitlan because of the religious virus he is spreading throughout the city. Ernest Hogan has indeed crafted a novel that has the kinetic energy of a semi truck barreling down a hill with no brakes. We see Xolotl take part in various philosophical discussions about religion, language, culture, environmentalism and their intersections. These conversations I found to be the most fascinating parts of the novel. The momentum is aided by the sonorous hybrid language Hogan has his characters sing throughout the story. Like Cortez on Jupiter, the language used is rhythmic. Simply reading individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, is a delight. That being said, the action scenes in the novel were the only lull for me. The conversations the characters had with each other was more compelling that seeing them physically fight each other. Cortez on Jupiter is a perfect novel, and High Aztech almost reaches those heights.

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.

You haven’t read something like High Aztech. A future reclaimed Tenochtitlán fought over by various religious factions via a virus in one upper middle-class Mexica artist named Xólotl Zapata. There is action, media gloss and gaze and blood sacrifice tech. Characters like the Televangelical couple for Mexica gods. A Garbage Queen and gangster lord with identity crises. Virus hallucinations, giants walking the land…it’s the book that really shows off Hogan’s recombocultural and Mondo style. Spanish and Nahuatl combine to Españahuatl that color the future better than any Klingon, Sindarin, or the misplaced regional accents that many books seems to have. The themes of the book play out with juice—these are issues we still struggle with, identity, religion, culture—and High Aztech is okay with difference and dissent. There are no rubber suited monsters to conquer, but lurid realities and vivid truths to experience in this future.

A little uneven as a story, but there are some stunningly written passages. I could see the beginnings of the freewheeling, surrealist, funny af style he perfects in his recent short story “These Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice Are Greatly Exaggerated.” I assign that story regularly in my decolonial SFF class and the students love it…assigning this novel this semester.

Ernest Hogan is brilliant at writing a world that could’ve been. Enjoyable from cover to cover as usual.

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.]