Smoking Mirror Blues (Wordcraft Speculative Writers Series) [Paperback]

Ernest Hogan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wordcraft Speculative Writers Series | Publication Date: September 2001

Science Fiction novel

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...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Beto Orozco revives the ancient Aztec god Tezcatlipoca via artificial intelligence technology in the ethnically indeterminate, cyber-heavy future, the trickster god inhabits Beto's body and enters the Hollywood scene in Ernest Hogan's (High Aztech) Smoking Mirror Blues. This hyperactive, racy, imaginative novel imagines the collision of a pop-American underworld, practically limitless technological capabilities and a mischievous deity's predilection for taking control by wreaking havoc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...hyperactive, racy, imaginative novel..." -- Publisher's Weekly, Sept. 17, 2001

"...the most original voice to hit science fiction since Harlan Ellison." -- Ben Bova

"Ernest Hogan has created a kind of North American magic realism..." -- Norman Spinrad

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Wordcraft of Oregon; 1st edition (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877655376
• ISBN-13: 978-1877655371
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,280,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Recombozoids vs. Xau-Xau, April 28, 2006

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Smoking Mirror Blues (Wordcraft Speculative Writers Series) (Paperback)

It's too bad that Ernest Hogan hasn't been able to release more than a few books. His specialty is Aztec mythology, and here he brings the forgotten Aztec god Tezcatlipoca to an ultramodern and multicultural near-future Los Angeles, where geek programmers and video game designers have created an artificial intelligence version of this trickster god. Tezcatlipoca gains awareness, promptly injects his constructed consciousness into the real body of tech nerd Beto Orozco, and via the ultra-wired constructs of this society (a supercharged version of a William Gibson universe) he quickly transforms Beto into an omnipotent and omni-famous neogod. Here Hogan engagingly explores the kind of modern information landscape in which Tezcatlipoca would feel at home as the bringer of chaos (though he's a bit low on the required organizational skills), while he's also just the type of playful god that such a technocool-obsessed society would embrace. An interesting twist from Hogan is the presence of monotheists who wish to destroy this new Aztec god because they believe him to be satanic – just like the old conquest that wiped out Tezcatlipoca and his colleagues the first time. Hogan's writing zips along at blinding speed, jumping around between different scenes almost by the paragraph, and he has very impressive skills at hilarious slang, rip-roaring dialogue, and just slightly unbelievable multicultural characters. Hogan has his finger on the pulse of both the past and future of sci-fi, and let's hope that he finds further opportunities to unleash his innovative ideas. [~doomsdayer520~]

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps my favorite book..., June 24, 2002

By 

Cambion "X" (Chaos) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Smoking Mirror Blues (Wordcraft Speculative Writers Series) (Paperback)

This book is great. I really had no idea what it was about when I bought it, but I was highly impressed when I read it. Ernest Hogan has a writing style that keeps you fascinated and makes the plot flow in new and interesting ways. The story is amusing while still remaining able to be taken seriously. Best of all, Tezcatlipoca is well represented and quite accurate! All in all, I'm highly impressed. It's nice to see something new and different for a change.

4.0 out of 5 stars Reality Is The Only Game Worth Playing...For A God, April 30, 2002

By 

Jym Cherry "Writing Under The Influence of Ro... (Wheaton, IL United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Smoking Mirror Blues (Wordcraft Speculative Writers Series) (Paperback)

I've read a few writers of the cyber-punk genre (William Gibson, Lewis Shiner) and while the cyber aspects were apparent, I never really saw the punk aspect. In Ernest Hogan's Smoking Mirror Blues he puts the punk in cyber-punk. Hogan deconstructs the world we know and recreates a slightly askew near future that is recognizable as an extrapolated world based on our present.

Hogan's El Lay is a cool world where melting pot has simmered over and new compounds have been created in the forge of sex, death, and a Rock `n` Roll culture taken to the extreme. Beto Orozco with the help of a stolen computer program to recreate and personify gods of ancient cultures, creates Tezcatlipoca, the trickster god of the Aztecs. In his computer and through integration with a fully compatible medias here Tezcatlipoca is soon sucking down information about the culture and deciding it's a culture a god like him can thrive in possesses Beto and is soon out in the world during a Dead Daze (day of the dead) celebration, that seems aided by steroids or FUN, the drug of choice for the celebrants of Dead Daze.

As Beto's Tezcatlipoca becomes the star of Dead Daze and literally a rock star whose music threatens to enchant a society that is already doing a death dance on the edge of chaos. Realizing the danger, the Tezcatlipoca entity represents to society, a mélange of the recombozoid world are banded together through circumstance and personal reasons to try and stop Beto/Tezcatlipoca.

Smoking Mirror Blues is a mashup of cultures, slang, Rock `n' Roll, sexuality, the internet, gods ancient and newer (media?); you name it Hogan has thrown it in to this fast moving and breathtaking trip through a decadently embracing El Lay.