"Hello, Ron. I have a question about Baltar you ought to answer. One of the things I liked about the original series was the way Baltar did all his chair-swiveling. Boy, he sure looked evil way the frak up there on that big pedestal. And then Lucifer or some other Cylon would come in, and there would be those big, dramatic polytonal chords, and then Baltar would slowly swivel around in his chair to face whatever had come into his room because before they came into his room, he was facing a wall, or something off screen-- who knows what was there. I'm sure there's been a lot of speculation about it. But you see, when you made the new Baltar the way he is-- that is, a non-- chair-swiveller, I didn't think the show could work at all. You've got to have a chair-swiveller in it, and there hasn't been one-- until now. Just as I'm getting used to Callis NOT being a chair-swiveller, there he is at the end of "Tigh Me Up" SWIVELING IN HIS CHAIR! Well, I must say I was very pleased with that, and so now I must ask: Was James Callis's chair-swiveling scene a tribute to John Colicos's chair-swiveling?"

Chair-swiveling is an old and honorable avocation for any accomplished and self-respecting villainous personage. How could its inclusion be anything but a loving tribute?

"Ron, I was just wondering if you were at all influenced by the posts you read on the message boards."

I'm interested in how people respond to the show and I suppose on some level it must influence me in some way as I go about writing and producing the series, but I'm not sure in what quantifiable way. I mean, I know there are large cadres out there with strong feelings for and against the Baltar/Six story, the Caprica story, Starbuck, etc., but I can't honestly say that anything I've read has caused me to change any of those elements one way or another. I basically just try to tell the best story I can according to my own lights and hope that the rest of you agree.

"My question to you would be this; How do you view Fan Fiction? Is it something that you dislike, especially now that it is starting to be created with what could be called, your reimaged Battlestar Galactica Universe, or do you encourage people to express themselves (with in limits) like Gene did with with the fan fiction for Star Trek? Is it something that writers are able to glean potential story elements from or should the fans just leave the stories to the writers of the shows? Where would you draw the line on fan fic for Galactica."

As far as I'm concerned, fan fiction (that is, fiction written for fun, or non-professionally) should feel free to go in whatever direction it feels like going. If you want to write a story about Starbuck being Adama's illegitimate daughter and how she's carrying on an illicit affair with Laura following an accident which flings them across time and space to the Ponderosa Ranch, be my guest. It's certainly no further out there than the K/S stories in Trekdom which detailed the sexual and romantic liasons between one James Kirk and one Mr. Spock.

If you're inspired by this series and these characters and you want to turn that inspiration into artistic expression, I've proud and hope you enjoy the process. (And it should go without saying that there is a very bright and bold line between writing for fun and writing for profit and only the foolish would care to mess with NBC-Universal's legal department.)

"Quick question, not actually BSG-related. In your recent post in your blog you mention that you grew up in Central California. I was just wondering if you'd care to share which town. I grew up in Merced, myself..."

I was a neighbor of yours. I grew up in Chowchilla.

"There are a lot of references to Republican Rome in BSG, in everything from the names Gaius and Valerii to the Religion to the democrato-militaristic govennment. Has this been done on purpose, or is it just a lot of coincidences?"

The original series used elements of various ancient civilizations and I wanted to continue that element, but I didn't feel that the Egyptian motif, which they used predominantly, would be particularly resonant in this series. Greco-Roman influences were also present in the orginal, and I felt that Roman influences in particular would have resonant value given today's American society both in the republicanism (lower-case) and in the portrait of a culture that had ascended to a certain plateau, had driven its enemies from the field, proclaimed itself the guardian of truth and justice and yet was still prey to the same frailties and failings of all other human endeavors.

"If we go too far with this are you prepared to deliver Captain Kirk's 'Get A Life' speech?"

I should be so lucky as to watch you guys get to that point.

"Twelve cylon models and twelve Olympian gods seems too much of coincidence to me. Is there any connection? "

And Twelve Colonies. Coincidence....?

"I would like to know, what happened to the group of people left behind with Helo, from the mini.

Also, during times of conflict, the military often calls upon the old retired service members. It would be interesting, to see some old time Viper pilots in the seats.

In this conflict, everyone is a participant. I would think it to be a good ideal to have everyone trained up for military duty. "

The fate of the people left behind on Caprica and the other Colonies was a grim one and we'll be dealing more with that next season. With fewer than 50,000 survivors, it's always going to be a judgement call as to which occupations and avocations are represented in our fleet. This very issue came up when we first started talking about "Act of Contrition," where the question of the availability of pilots, and specifically old Viper pilots, came up in the writers' room. I felt that I didn't want the old pilots sitting around for us to capitalize on and that I wanted to be very careful when we had a story where we "happened" to find the very skills we needed in the survivor population. The press corps, for example was established as being aboard Galactica in the opening of the pilot, so the continuation of them in the fleet felt plausible and reasonable to me while also allowing us to play certain elements of media and culture in the show.

"Are there any plans in the pipeline to recruit authors and release a series of BSG v2.0 books? Of Particular interest would be the first Cylon war."

Books are in the works and the Cylon Wars are part of the possible subject matter.

"Tangentally, will the BSG bible ever be streamlined and built for public release? (perhaps as a companion to the series?)"

Possibly. A lot of the background information on the characters is starting to come out in both Seasons One and Two, so there might come a point where I'd let the bible be put out there for public consumption.

"I am aware that you intend to addressthe logistical problems the fleet suffers, however, do you intend to explore indepth the consumable production vs consumption directly. Considering the tonnage dictated by Baltar in one of the episodes one would think that every possible space would be converted to hydroponic grow ops (of the legal variety)? There seems to bee an awefull lot of wasted space on some of these ships."

This has always been in the back of my mind and I'd like to bring it up in the show at some point. (And they're probably growing the illegal variety too.)

"Could you please explain the writing process for an extra season stroy arc if you don't know if you are going to be signed from one season to the next? hopefully the Sci Fi network will come to there senses and offer a multi year contract. "

I just proceed as if it were already a done deal. I wrote the miniseries as a pilot for a series, without ever considering how to cover my bases if it didn't get picked up and I wrote the Season One finale as a cliff-hanger without any backup plan whatsoever if we didn't return.

Sometimes you just gotta roll the hard six.

"What are your thoughts on the decision to aire BSG in the UK before North America? I personally think the the pirating of the episodes is hurting the ratings."

I think, on balance, it was very positive for the show. Despite the pirating and file-sharing of the shows from the UK, which may or may not have depressed ratings slightly, I think that the UK exposure and earlier critical response helped to build momentum and interest for the series premiere in the US. I'm happy it worked out the way it did.

"Are you still working with Zoic for design work?"

Absofrakkinglutely.

There are people you do thank and people you should, and it occurs to me that now is a good time to finally move a man who had a great influence on my life out of the later category and into the former. That man is Harlan Ellison, one of the greatest speculative fiction writers this country has ever produced and a legitimate legend in his own time. Ironically, it’s not his writing which influenced me, his stories nor his style, although I was an avid reader of his work, notably “Chasing the Nightmare” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” “Harlan Ellison’s Watching” and “The Glass Teat.” In truth, the man influenced me in two encounter which seemed trivial at the time, but which turned out to have been pivotal moments in my life as a writer.

As readers of this blog know by now, I was a born and bred Trek fan growing up in the mid 1970’s, watching the show in strip syndication and always on the lookout for the odd piece of merchandising that might find its way into my neighborhood bookstore. But growing up in a small town in central California, I’d never had the opportunity to come anywhere near that legendary gathering of geekdom – the convention. So it wasn’t until I was a freshman at Cornell in 1983, that I had my first chance to pay for the privilege of sitting in a badly lit auditorium and listen to panel discussions on the feasibility of interstellar travel and marvel at just how many people had the time and resources to construct their very own Gorn costumes, complete with universal translator at the college in Stony Brook, New York.

I do remember wandering a dealer room for the first time, pondering the cost of a fan-produced Phaser II, and seeing a screening of “The Dead Zone” but what really stuck with me, what ultimately had a far greater impact on me than anything else was when Harlan Ellison took the stage and began to read a piece he’d just written to the gathered. The piece was about a recent incident in the nation’s capitol which had garnered coast to coast live coverage in that period of embryonic cable overkill. A man had driven a van which he claimed was filled with explosives to the base of the Washington Monument and threatened to blow it up unless there was an end to the nuclear arms race. Police snipers ultimately shot and killed him and discovered that he had no explosives.

Harlan’s piece that day in Stony Brook condemned not the disturbed man in the van, but the actions of the police who killed him and more broadly condemned us all for focusing more on his empty threat of blowing up a piece of stone than to the very real threat of nuclear holocaust he wanted to end.

It was not a popular sentiment. Fans, heretofore fawning and sycophantic to Harlan’s every word and bon mot, began to boo and hiss, some even yelling obscenities at the stage. To be sure, I shared the feelings of most in the audience. I felt that the police had acted in a mostly responsible way, that they had no way of knowing whether or not there were really explosives in the van and that his death was regrettable, but ultimately of his own making. But what struck me that day was not the political sentiment Harlan expressed, but his willingness to say something in public that was unpopular, to challenge the assumptions of his most devoted followers and his blunt refusal to back down in the face of their outrage. He gave not an inch, refusing to bow to the rising tide of anger in the audience and continued to read his essay in full knowledge of the fact that it was probably going to cost him more than one book sale at the dealer table later that day.

I remember being confused, angered, and somewhat disappointed by what one of my literary heroes had stood up and said. “How could he think that?” I said to myself and shook my head at what seemed like an inverted moral stance. I never read the piece itself, and to this day I have only the vaguest memory of him reading it out loud, but what struck me then and what sticks with me to this very day is the image of a writer standing on principle in the face of overwhelming disapproval. Harlan had made a career, admittedly, of being the skunk at the party, of saying things he knew would piss people off, but never for the easy shock value. He had an opinion and he wasn’t afraid to state it, regardless of the consequences to his book sales or how it made him look in polite society. I can still picture him standing on that stage and shouting against the ocean rearing up against him and it still challenges me to be the kind of writer willing to say the thing that no one else wants to hear.

The man had guts.

The second encounter occurred years many years later after I had become an established writer and had been invited to participate on a panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills along with several much bigger names, including J. Michael Straczynski and… Harlan Ellison. It was the first time I’d met the man and in all honesty, I was too embarrassed to say very much, to him lest I start to gush, so satisfied myself with a simple “Hello, I love your work” and then we went into the panel.

Now, this panel occurred at a very particular moment in my career. I was working on “Roswell” as an executive producer, but I was deep into preproduction on the ill-fated pilot I’d written for a series based on Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonriders of Pern” books. It had been a difficult and unhappy development process, but we were only five days away from the first day of principal photography. A major problem had arisen, however. The network had commissioned another writer to rewrite my draft over my objections and in my opinion, had eviscerated everything that I loved about the project. I didn’t want to shoot that draft and they did. As I drove into the parking lot of the Museum I learned via a cell phone call from my agent that a critical conference call with the network was scheduled to take place the next morning which would determine the fate of the entire project, and when I took my seat on the panel I was frankly distracted by the thought that my very first pilot, my very fist shot at running my own series was in serious jeopardy of coming to ruin right before my very eyes unless I “played ball” as they like to say.

The panel discussion was fun and interesting and after a while I forget my Pern problems and simply enjoyed being on the same stage with some legendary figures of the genre. At the end, the final question was put to all of us was “Do you have any advice for young writers starting out?” It’s a familiar question, and to be honest, I have a stock response, (which I will someday bore readers of this blog with when I really need material) and I gave it in my usual inimitable fashion, congratulating myself on having held my own throughout the night.

But when the question came around to Harlan, he leaned forward into the microphone, and with all the passion and ferocity I remembered so well from that convention stage in Stony Brook he said:

“Don’t be a whore!”

The world quite literally spun around me under the hot lights and it felt as though the Universe was conveying a message directly to me. It was so simple. “Don’t be a whore!” Don’t write crap because they pay you well. Don’t put your name on something that you know will suck. Don’t sacrifice whatever integrity you have as a writer for a check.

The next day, during the infamous conference call, there came the point my agent had warned me would come, when I either played ball and went with the script I knew in my heart was terrible or my beloved pilot was going to die, and when that moment came, Harlan’s words rang in my ears like the church bells above Quasimodo’s head.

“Don’t be a whore!”

I wasn’t. The project died. And I have been grateful to Harlan Ellison ever since.

I do not have the mastery of the English language Harlan does, I do not have his brilliance or his gift for story-telling, but I’d like to think that I’ve been inspired by the fire that burns so brightly in his soul and that it’s given me at least some of the courage I was lucky enough to see in person on two separate stages.

So thank you, Harlan. Thank you for being one of the most influential men in my life and thank you for giving me something to aspire to.