by Sesshu Foster
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Product Description
In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism reigns supreme. Aztecs armed with automatic weapons, totemic powers and blood sacrifice conquer and colonize 1940s Europe, as ghosts of the world wars emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles. Atomik Aztex is a hilarious read. A potent concoction, with influences from graphic novels, along with Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs, and an outrageous cyber-Aztln mix reminiscent of Guillermo Gmez-Pea. Sesshu Foster is the author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Nuclear Meltdown, 2008-03-28
No plot - OK; satire - OK; replace all hard C's with K - OK; posit Aztec civilization lives on to present day - OK; screwed-up Aztec warrior working in pig slaughterhouse - less OK; also a union organizer - ?; nothing really happens - less than OK.
To those who loved this book, good for you. To those who compare this with Joyce, Burroughs, and Vonnegut, I really, really don't think so. His imitation of them does not mean he is of their caliber.
If you like literary gimmicks with some humor and a far-out premise, this is an interesting read. If you want a read that has a plot and eventually makes some sense, pass on this one.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 You ain't read nothing 'til you've read this book!, 2007-05-12
Sesshu Foster's backhanded homage to that foggy old fascist W.B.Yeats in Atomik Aztex is worth the price of this book all by itself: "Stalingrad 1942" rips up the pompous pretension of WBY's revered "Easter 1916" in a manner both hilarious and touching. Like Atomic Aztek's itself, this is parody taken to the highest level. Sesshu Foster is a dark, lightning-struck genius--bursts of Joyce, Warren Zevon, Burroughs, Jose Torres Tama and Vonnegut. This is the "movie" that Apocalypto should have been--eat your heart out, Mel!
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Atomik Fizzle Aztek, 2007-01-05
Atomic Aztek-Great title; great premise-Azteks defeat Spanish conquistidors and go on to defeat Nazis with other Socialist allies.
Plus a parallel story of an Aztek hero in a Farmer John meatpacking plant. While the odd spellings was at first fun, it grew tiresome. Likewise, the switching of plots and places never went anywhere. Much promise, but overall very disappointing.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
'Atomik Aztex' is a Good Time, 2006-05-30
"Persons attempting to find a plot in this book should read Huck Finn" Sesshu Foster recommends in the opening of his premier novel Atomic Aztek. So I did. Read Huck Finn, I mean. I found in the introduction of Huck Finn the advice that if readers want a plot, they should be shot.
The literary transformation of consciousness created by reading this text had (at least) three parts for me:
1) I laughed my ass off. Because of the allegorical spin and elliptical critique of the American historical paradigm. If you are as weary as I am of searing political, cultural and historical distortion, and need a good laugh, read this book.
2) I was engaged. With the energy and literary brilliance of the language. If you are as burnt out as I am of fiction that shouts in clich� narrative, ordinary time, flat characters born from dry imagination, no sound, no ear, no rhythm, if you need a drug-like interface with words that bounce through your mind with crazy magic, read this book.
3) I was relieved and rejuvenated. Because I realized again why I read, why I write, why this creative life of engaging text is my life-long choice. For the sheer pleasure of infusion with profound literary and political aesthetic of expression. If you seek connection through text with imaginations as wild, intelligent and brave as your own, I would say, take a chance and read this book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
cyklikal trip through the Aztek Socialist Imperium, 2006-01-03
Sesshu Foster's ATOMIK AZTEX is a trip like no other. Foster himself acknowledges Ishmael Reed's MUMBO JUMBO and William Burroughs' NAKED LUNCH as models for his wild satire, as well as Kerouac -- VISIONS OF CODY in particular, I would say, especially its chronic use of lists. Foster warns the reader: "Persons attempting to find a plot in this book should read Huck Finn." This is a fair warning, and the non-linear cyklikal conception makes the book hard to describe. But it grabbed me right away, and it's a great read if you like the out-there novels of Reed, Burroughs and Kerouac. Foster is a long-time poet of LA's east side, and the strength of ATOMIK AZTEX is his poetic riffing, like jazz improvisation. The weakness is the structure, or lack thereof, which of course is covered by the introductory caveat. So realize that what makes this a great read is the frenetic improv -- it's Ornette, or Cecil, or Trane, not Beethoven.
In a couple of interviews I've read, Foster describes the book as a satire, a social critique of America. I can't say that it succeeds on that level, it's too out-there to draw blood. The protagonist, an Aztek warrior, is presented as a heroic hipster, and this is clearly too over-the-top to be taken seriously -- the Aztek Socialist Imperium is based on human sacrifice on a planetary scale! So there would seem to be a parallel between the U.S.A. and the A.S.I., but Foster never drives it home. The protagonist also lives in another dimension where he works in a slaughterhouse in East L.A. and participates in a CIO union drive organized by the CPUSA. The Aztek warrior is assigned to lead an elite unit against the Nazis at Stalingrad. Not linear, this only makes sense in the cyklikal omniverse, but there is another parallel suggested between the Aztec Socialist Imperium and the now defunct Soviet Union. Socialism has an ambiguous status in the book, both held up as a positive alternative to materialistik, captitalistik Amerika, and subtly undermined through its association with the A.S.I. and the U.S.S.R., neither of which is any sort of ethical ideal.
But despite the structural and ethical problems, ATOMIK AZTEX is full of energy and imagination, and will jolt you into a higher level of consciousness! Here's a quote to close the review:
"The Europeans figured they'd wipe us out, Plan A, enslave our peoples..." "Could we let that happen? Of course not. Did we care if they had a Plan B? Hell, no. Cuz in no way does that fit our aesthetic conception of how the universe is supposed to run. It's just plain ugly. To think that they want to foist that vision of Reality on the rest of us. That's the insult. Barbarik, cheap aesthetik based on flimsy Mechanistik notions of the omniverse as a Swiss watch set to ticking by some sort of Trinity." (p. 2)
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