A little fable for the season…

Brian C. Coad hails originally from the English county of Cornwall, but now resides in San Francisco, California. The author, a metallurgist, has sold over a half-dozen stories to Analog and has spent most of his career working on aerospace and electronic materials, especially precious metals. “Taking Care of Daddy,” his first sale to Asimov’s, “began as a satirical extrapolation of the modern American health-care and employment systems. Most of my efforts tend, despite my attempts to make them light and bubbly, to have an undertow of serious social concerns, à la H.G. Wells—my master this half century past.”