William C. Dietz

William C. Dietz was a man who lived fully, with a heart as expansive as the galaxies he wrote about. I’ll never forget the time I met him at a sci-fi convention in 2012. He’d just signed a copy of *Halo: The Flood*, and when I asked him about his favorite part of the book, he grinned and said, “The part where the Covenant realizes they’re not as invincible as they thought.” His humor was sharp, his curiosity endless, and he had this way of making everyone feel like they mattered. William wasn’t just a writer—he was a storyteller who believed in the power of imagination to connect people, even across the stars. He was the kind of man who made his family feel like they were his greatest adventure. My mother, who adored him, once told me he’d spent hours teaching her how to play *