Grand Slam 2006 - Day Two

Oh man, what a great day!

Firefly panel: HAWESOME.
G4 booth babes: HAWESOME
Talking with Brent: HAWESOME.
Reading and Q&A: HAWESOME.

I'm just too damn tired to get into the details now, but I have lots of great notes, and I recorded my entire talk for a future RFB.

I'm going to fall into bed, now.

Update: Actually, there is one thing really worth adding right now, while the memory of it is still more visceral than intellectual.

The last question I took during my Q&A (the first I've done in several years) was about Michael Piller. A woman asked me if I could comment on Michael, and what it was like to work with him. All my comments are recorded, but they can be distilled down to this: Michael was brilliant, and he made The Next Generation great. When I was done, and sadly after I'd switched off my recorded, Harry Kloor, a friend of mine who is an accomplished writer and producer, walked up to the stage, and he said, "I wrote for Michael. He was like a father to all of us."

I turned the microphone back on, and told the crowd, "There's something I think you should hear, that's important."

I gave the mic to Harry, and he said, "I just told Wil that Michael was like a father to all of his writers. He could be stern, he could be tough, he could be nurturing, and he could be supportive. And he made all of us want to be -- no, he made us better writers."

I thought it was a wonderful tribute to Michael's memory and his legacy: he didn't just leave us with amazing television like Star Trek and The Dead Zone; Michael also helped a lot of writers discover and achieve their potential. He cast a stone into a pond, and the ripples (like Battlestar Galactica, for one) are just beginning to show.