My friend Beth messaged me one day last week to inform me that she had been watching Tales From the Darkside and recognized one of the writers’ names as someone we both knew from attending science fiction conventions: Michael Kube-McDowell. She said she found his episodes very imaginative.

I happen to still be in touch with Michael (who has since dropped the Kube part of the name) after all these years, so I messaged him to tell him what Beth had discovered.

“Where did she see it?” he asked. (He meant on what streaming service, I think.)

“She was watching it on her old collection of DVDs.”

“I didn’t even know they were on DVDs,” Michael said. It turns out the only copies that he had of his own work were some VCR recordings he had made at the time the episodes first aired. And he no longer had a VCR player.

I pointed out where he could get all four seasons of the DVDs online for about $20.

And so he did. “A mere 43 years later, I finally have a professional copy!” he said.

This happy incident happened because Beth watched the DVDs and noticed the writer’s name, something not many people bother to do.

Perhaps because I’m a writer myself, I do, too. I find myself saying, “Wow! David Gerrold wrote this episode of Babylon 5!” or “Theodore Sturgeon wrote this episode of Star Trek!” (I then often have to give this announcement some context for my husband by telling him who the writer is and what else they’ve written. But I digress.) (Oh, and not completely off the topic, did you know Ray Bradbury wrote the script for the movie version of Moby Dick? But I digress some more.)

I like to look for the names of directors, too. I don’t recognize them as often as I do writers, but sometimes I notice that an actor on the show has directed one or more episodes. I always think, “Good for them! Way to branch out!”

I feel the same way about songwriters. People give love to the singers, but barely notice the songwriters much of the time. (I have a little game I play with Dan. When I’m listening to iTunes (or Apple Music or whatever they call it these days), we’ll hear a song, and I’ll say, “Okay, who wrote this?” He’s right a lot of the time, but when he doesn’t know, he’ll guess Kinky Friedman if it’s a funny song or Willie Nelson if it isn’t. Once he said, “I don’t know his name, but he wrote that song that goes ‘living and dying in 3/4 time.'” It was Jimmy Buffett, and he was right. I was impressed. But I digress again.)

So I say, “Pay attention to the writers! Show them some love!” It’s hard to throw your arms around ChatGPT and say, “Thanks for the memories!” (Or, if you’re not close enough to the writer to throw your arms around them other than metaphorically, send them money. I once sent Michael a quarter to make up for royalties when I bought one of his books at a used book store. But I digress yet again, for the last time this week.)