Firefly died long before its time, but not before attracting enough fans to fill the largest ballroom with legions of self-proclaimed Browncoats. In Sunday’s “An Hour in the Firefly ‘Verse” in the Marriott Atrium, Nathan Fillion, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin, and Alan Tudyk discussed some of the potential twists and turns Firefly might have taken had it continued to fly.

In its first year as a host hotel, the Sheraton met the warm embrace of Dragon*Con attendees and their sweet, sweet parties. The Sheraton became party central Saturday night as music from three parties echoed through the hotel’s halls. Its distance from the other host hotels did nothing to deter any partiers who flooded the streets as they trekked to their favorite get-together.

Slash fiction has held its own in the Harry Potter canon of slash fiction for years, but it’s not a place actors go very often. Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the HP movie adaptations, didn’t see it until a fan handed him a stack of stories.

Margaret Weis Games premiered the Battlestar Galactica role-playing game at Dragon*Con this year, selling the book before the public release.

Based on the “re-imagined” Battlestar on the Sci-Fi Channel, the show has established a fanatic following that prizes the “new” BSG for tightly-woven character and event-based plotting, as well as a lack of technical information.

Holly Black has published three young adult urban fantasy novels, Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside, which reached the New York Times bestseller list. She co-created the Spiderwick Chronicles series with Tony DiTerlizzi, which has been adapted into a movie by Paramount, to be released next year.

On Saturday at 11:30, the actors from Battlestar Galactica took center stage in the Regency Ballroom for a lively discussion typical of the GQ’s from BSG. Aaron Douglas, Richard Hatch, and Jamie Bamber fired innuendos and complements like ordinance out of a viper.

Douglas confirmed that his last-minute visit to Dragon*Con had been influenced by his fans’ email campaign to get him to Atlanta after Katee Sackhoff cancelled.

Claudia Black made her first convention appearance in more than two years Sat in front of a capacity crowd in Centennial 1. After being moved to a larger room, fans still had to be turned away, but those inside were treated to 30 minutes with Claudia Black.

Battlestar Galactica is set to get a lot darker when the show returns to the Sci-Fi Channel this October.

“As for the upcoming season, the two words you are going to hear a lot is dark and intense, so you really don’t want any spoilers,” technical advisor Kevin R. Grazier told a crowd of fans at “Sitrep: The State of the Fleet” Saturday morning.

While the cast has refrained from letting spoilers loose, they have hinted that …

Moments after writers Dan Jolley and Marie Croall finished telling a room full of aspiring comic book writers how hard it is to break into comics, one writer found out all he needs to do is make one phone call.

“The only way to learn to write scripts is to write scripts,” Croall said. “You have to get out there and do it (yourself), and do it consistently over time and then take it to a …

The world fantasy characters inhabit is often as important as the players themselves. Saturday night, six pros shared their tips for memorable worlds. Dragon*Con institution Josepha Sherman joined Robert Asprin, Brad Strickland, Kathryn Sullivan, Chesya Burke and Wesley Lowe on Sunday night for an authors’ look at world-building in science fiction and fantasy.

“You need to think about your world and what makes sense,” author Josepha Sherman said. “If you take a Polynesian culture and put …