Hughtopias

  Alexandra ver1c Short fiction by Hugh Tayler, 2022 September I had the garden hose and a trigger sprayer out washing pickle juice off the front sidewalk before it dried in the hot sun. I hoped it was pickle juice and those green things were pickles. Funny things happen when people put food on the Free Table. The table is mostly unsupervised and about 15% of the population has trouble behaving when not watched. I washed the pickles into the gutter and got the hose out of the way because there was a woman walking a dog down the sidewalk. She held up her hand to get my attention as she got closer. "Say there. Could I get some water for the Duke here? If it wouldn't be too much trouble, a bowl would be lovely." There were some mixed toys on the table in a small plastic bin. I dumped them gently onto the table, rinsed out the bin and filled it with water. She took it from me and put it down for the big short haired dog. "Danke - thanks. Thank you so much." She wa

A lot of fiction is cranked out to pay the rent. I understand and I admire the skills. I can type, but I found it easier to pack lumber and shovel concrete and dig splinters out of carpenters than to learn to write for a living.  But I was - am - addicted. First to comic books, then to speculative fiction. I am used to the regret of reading fiction that is a waste of time, short stories that lack personal insight and grand novels that show us no better way forward. But what I really regret are books with disturbing imagery that I wish I could un-read or just forget. Zelazny's "Creatures of Light and Darkness", Chabon's "Adventures of Kavalier and Klay", and Larry Niven's later Ringworld books with ghouls are a few examples.  And there are authors that I have learned to just stay away from: Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Jim Grant writing as Lee Child. And there are movie makers that I feel the same way about, with Tim Burton at the top of the list. So

Roger Zelazny's science-fantasy novel Lord of Light is widely regarded as one of the best SF novels ever written. It sets up a series of puzzles, the action is non-stop, and plot still gave me small surprises even though this is the fourth time I have read it. It uses Hindu mythology to re-envision the often-told story of a planetary colony that develops an oppressive ruling class. It is clearly a work by an exceptional poet and professional writer at his best. It shares a core narrative with many other Zelazny stories: a seriously imperfect self-centred immortal protagonist surrounded by vividly defined supporting characters. If you take a look at Isle of the Dead, Lord Demon, and the carefully crafted Roadmarks you will see a pattern that evolves to its most profitable form in the Princes in Amber potboilers. Zelazny was part of the New Wave of science fiction of the 1960s, postwar writers who had the freedom to challenge the dominant social ideas about religion, sexuality, socia

 I have accumulated way too many non-fiction books. So why don't I just read them and pass them on? It turns out that learning useful information by from most books is massively inefficient. Most non-fiction authors don't write handbooks or reference materials, the kind that are dense with information. Instead, they sprinkle a few key points - less than a couple of pages worth - over two hundred pages. The other 198 pages are often well-written and interesting and insightful and personal. A perfect example is James Lovelock's "The Ages of Gaia". I found myself digging through pages of chatty personal opinion to find out simple information on how the history of our atmosphere matches the geological record. The problem is human memory: we don't easily sort out and memorize the critical insights, the ones that fit with other knowledge and give us new tools for understanding humanity and the world around us. Instead we remember the narratives, the stories, pretty

 Suggested wording for illustrated display commemorating the 150th anniversary of BC's entry into Confederation, to be located in Strathcona Park. Strathcona British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 on the promise of a transcontinental railway within ten years. That promise was derailed by the Pacific Scandal that brought down John A MacDonald's government in 1873. One of the Conservative mutineers that ended the corrupt deal between the government and Hugh Allan was Donald Smith. Smith's own associates then built the railroad and acquired huge quantities of real estate, Smith himself bending the last spike in 1885. Smith was a central or background figure in the Hudson's Bay Company, industry and banking, the CPR, Vancouver real estate and just about everything else in the massive expansion of Canadian colonial industrial capitalism of the late 1800's. A loyal supporter of British imperialism, he was sober, hard-working, incredibly wealthy and well-connected, and a s

I went through a lot of material about how Color Theory is taught to artists and selected only the essentials. It could use a lot more illustration, but I kept it under 20 pages. Google Drive displays only the text in the RTF file, so you will have to download it to read it. RTF files usually display fine on almost any system. The link is here:    Deconstructing Color Theory ver 18 Header picture: