Smoking Mirror Blues


Book Description

AN ANCIENT GOD & Tezcatlipoca, the Mirror that Smokes, warrior/wizard god of the Aztecs. Western Civilization thought it wiped him out centuries ago... A NEW TECHNOLOGY & With the help of silly-bio nanochips, Beto Orozco creates an artificial intelligence version of Tezcatlipoca. The result is a computerized resurrection... THE FUTURE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME & So Tezcatlipoca hijacks Beto's body, and runs wild through futuristic Hollywood. The trickster adapts well to the brave, new world, and gets back to his old business of creating chaos and taking control... -- Cover page 4.




High Aztech


Book Description

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, Tenochtitlan, 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"




Robo Sacer


Book Description

Robo Sacer engages the digital humanities, critical race theory, border studies, biopolitical theory, and necropolitical theory to interrogate how technology has been used to oppress people of Mexican descent—both within Mexico and in the United States—since the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. As the book argues, robo-sacer identity emerges as transnational flows of bodies, capital, and technology become an institutionalized state of exception that relegates people from marginalized communities to the periphery. And yet the same technology can be utilized by the oppressed in the service of resistance. The texts studied here represent speculative stories about this technological empowerment. These texts theorize different means of techno-resistance to key realities that have emerged within Mexican and Chicano/a/x communities under the rise and reign of neoliberalism. The first three chapters deal with dehumanization, the trafficking of death, and unbalanced access to technology. The final two chapters deal with the major forms of violence—feminicide and drug-related violence—that have grown exponentially in Mexico with the rise of neoliberalism. These stories theorize the role of technology both in oppressing and in providing the subaltern with necessary tools for resistance. Robo Sacer builds on the previous studies of Sayak Valencia, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Guy Emerson, Achille Mbembe, and of course Giorgio Agamben, but it differentiates itself from them through its theorization on how technology—and particularly cyborg subjectivity—can amend the reigning biopolitical and necropolitical structures of power in potentially liberatory ways. Robo Sacer shows how the cyborg can denaturalize constructs of zoē by providing an outlet through which the oppressed can tell their stories, thus imbuing the oppressed with the power to combat imperialist forces.




Cortez on Jupiter


Book Description

"Hogan's debut, first published in 1990, introduced the subgenre of Chicano SF to a startled, dazzled American audience. All Pablo Cortez cares about is creating art, whether it's humongous graffiti sprayed across Los Angeles or zero-gravity paint slinging in space. When he confronts the alien Sirens of Jupiter, who have zapped the minds of earlier explorers, he takes their overwhelming flood of bizarre images as subject matter for new masterpieces. A jangling, rambunctious picture of artistic genius ... tons of fun for freethinking readers who appreciate heroes with cojones." Publisher's Weekly "Hard SF, satire, adventure, and some very strange humor combine in this intriguing, inventive, and sometimes disconcerting SF story." -Science Fiction Chronicle A wild young Chicano artist who covers Greater Los Angeles with fantastic graffiti. A beautiful African telepath who opens the door to communications with the deadly Sirens of Jupiter. "An alien first contact story featuring a hyperactive, irreverent, and self-absorbed Chicano artist from East LA. Cortez is recruited to make contact with creatures discovered on Jupiter who "speak" in projected images. It's a dangerous assignment; previous attempts to communicate have ended in insanity and death, but Pablo is always up for a little bit of craziness." - Michael Lichter, Amazon "It grabs you and won't let you go. The best [first novel] I've read in science fiction since Neuromancer." - Tom Witmore, Locus Not since Ayn Rand's Howard Roarke has there been an artist as iconoclastic, as idealistic, and as splendidly spectacular as Pablo Cortez. And look out, he's twice as radical! Energetic, fast-paced, funny, and thoroughly enjoyable." -Analog Combining hard science fiction with pyrotechnics worthy of "The Stars, My Destination," Ernest Hogan tells the story of the painter who founds the Guerrilla Muralists Of Los Angeles, goes on to make Mankind's first contact with the sentient life-forms of Jupiter. "If Hunter S Thompson and Alfred Bester had a Chicano child, it would be this." Dave Hutchinson It's a roller-coaster ride from vulgarity to the transcendent, as the unforgettable Pablo Cortez struggles, selfishly and selflessly, to expand humanity's consciousness on a journey from the barrio to the stars. "Ernest Hogan is the creator of a Xicano science fiction genre with a crossover readership. ...raw creativity." - Frank S Lechuga *** "All cultures have some acceptable form of human sacrifice. And if you really want to cause trouble, try taking it away." -Pablo Cortez Introductory price $9.99 - regularly $12.99




Smoke Signals


Book Description

In this book the author, an investigative journalist, traces the social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in an ongoing culture war. He describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry. In 1996, Californians voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Similar laws have followed in several other states, but not without antagonistic responses from federal, state, and local law enforcement. The author draws attention to underreported scientific breakthroughs that are reshaping the therapeutic landscape: medical researchers have developed promising treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions that are beyond the reach of conventional cures. This book is an examination of the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world's most controversial plant.




Caminar


Book Description

Caminar is the story of a boy who joins a small band of guerilla fighters who must decide what being a man during a time of war really means.




The Smoking Mirror


Book Description

Carol and Johnny Garza are 12-year-old twins whose lives in a small Texas town are forever changed by their mother's unexplained disappearance. Shipped off to relatives in Mexico by their grieving father, the twins soon learn that their mother is a nagual, a shapeshifter, and that they have inherited her powers. In order to rescue her, they will have to descend into the Aztec underworld and face the dangers that await them. American Library Association, 2016 Pura Belpre Author Honor winning novel.




The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature presents over forty essays by leading and emerging international scholars of Latino/a literature and analyses: Regional, cultural and sexual identities in Latino/a literature Worldviews and traditions of Latino/a cultural creation Latino/a literature in different international contexts The impact of differing literary forms of Latino/a literature The politics of canon formation in Latino/a literature. This collection provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of this literary culture.




Tezcatlipoca


Book Description

Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on “the lord of the smoking mirror,” one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca’s nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations—objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull—and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.




The Latinx Files


Book Description

In The Latinx Files, Matthew David Goodwin traces how Latinx science fiction writers are reclaiming the space alien from its xenophobic legacy in the science fiction genre. The book argues that the space alien is a vital Latinx figure preserving Latinx cultures by activating the myriad possible constructions of the space alien to represent race and migration in the popular imagination. The works discussed in this book, including those of H.G. Wells, Gloria Anzaldúa, Junot Diaz, André M. Carrington, and many others, often explicitly reject the derogatory correlation of the space alien and Latinxs, while at other times, they contain space aliens that function as a source of either enlightenment or horror for Latinx communities. Throughout this nuanced analysis, The Latinx Files demonstrates how the character of the space alien has been significant to Latinx communities and has great potential for future writers and artists.