Hughtopias

Santa Buddha                            Short Fiction by Hugh Tayler 2022 December ver02a   I was picking up spilled Lego around the Free Table when someone famous and her two daughters walked up to the table.  She's one of those people who always says hi or makes a thoughtful remark that gets others talking. She seems instantly familiar, so I think she's famous, but I'm not sure for what.   The girls found a banana box under the table and dragged it out to look at what was in it. I said, "Yeah, there must 15 dolls in that box but someone took their feet off. It's creepy but I haven't had time to reinstall them." One of the girls said, "We'll do it!"  And their mum said, "But you can only take one doll each. We have so many toys already." I said, "So you don't need more Christmas stuff?" I pointed to a small stack of random decorations with a wooden Santa meditating in the lotus position, as if he were Buddha.   "

Here are contents of an email to reporter Erica Hellerstein, who did a piece in Coda Story with the title "Grieving California".  Thank you for saying what Joan Didion isn't here to say. I'm sorry, but I skimmed your piece on grieving California. Twice. I just could not look too closely at the degree of personal loss it contained, the loss that so many of us share. I became fascinated by the geography of California when our daughter's husband moved to Mountain View to work for "a company that sells advertising". Every year for five years we drove down from Vancouver BC to visit them. I found a bicycle and used to go riding on the Bay Trail between Alivio and Palo Alto. I read about the history of the Bay Area, then I read David Carle's "Water and the California Dream" and the place took on a whole different dimension. And, of course, I found Joan Didion's California essays. We had one last trip planned, one last chance for me to see the

Fiction Addiction - rereading "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner Warning: All Spoilers, Not a Review If you are thinking of reading "Stand on Zanzibar" (SoZ),  it is worth trying at least a couple of hundred pages, especially if you are a developing writer.  It was a Hugo-winning blockbuster SF book when it came out in 1968: unique in style, massive in size and scope, and full of ideas and memorable characters. It is still in print as part of the SF Masterworks series. Born in 1934, Brunner would have been in his early thirties, a hard-working and skilled professional writer, someone who cared deeply about injustices and social problems. I couldn't put the book down when I first read it and I have re-read it at least a couple of times since then. Fifty-four years have passed since it was written, and ten years have passed since 2010, the year in which the book was set.  There are biographies of Brunner and retrospective reviews of the book on line, some of whic