Halt and Catch Dragon Fire

Halt and Catch Fire takes its name from a bit of early computer folklore — a mythical IBM-era instruction that could make a CPU lock up, spin out, or “catch fire.” But I’ve come to believe it means something far more human: the way certain visionaries and artists operate in undefined states, pushing themselves past limits until something breaks or something beautiful emerges.

Lately, I’ve been deep in the rabbit hole of a new project — something I hope might lift my family and me out of the poverty-line reality of the creative life. Something I can build between books, columns, and art projects. It pulls together everything I love: technology, art, worldbuilding, storytelling, and the pastime that shaped me when I first moved to Colorado at twelve.

I call it Dragon Fire, an immersive Dungeons & Dragons destination gaming experience I aim to launch this summer with a partner or two. I’ve been working on it fourteen hours a day for more weeks than I can count.

That’s not the story I’m writing here, but it’s the backdrop.

Whenever I start a new creative endeavor, I immerse myself in movies, books, and documentaries that — at least in my mind — orbit the thing I’m building. For Dragon Fire, one side quest was trying to create a miniature, stylized version of Estes Park, my home, which holds its own kind of magic. It’s why five to seven million people visit every year.

All my adventures and dungeons will be based on local landmarks, recreated in 28mm or 32mm scale. To pull that off, I’ve been sculpting foam and running both resin and filament printers nonstop. At one point, I tried to build my own text-to-STL generator before finally giving up and buying a discounted subscription to Meshy.ai.

And right in the middle of that grind, I asked my AI collaborator for a TV show recommendation — something to help me wake up the next morning, make coffee, sit back down at the desk, and do it all again.

It gave me Halt and Catch Fire.

I had never even heard of the show, though it aired on AMC from 2014 to 2017. And yet it felt instantly familiar. The early episodes looked like the living rooms and garages I grew up around — my father being an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard before becoming lead engineer at Rioport and co-founding Magic Backup. That era of building something in a garage that might change the world was my childhood, and it’s the throughline that led me to the life I have now as a writer, artist, and builder.

The show follows four brilliant, flawed people across a decade of technological upheaval — the birth of the personal computer, the rise of online communities, and finally the dawn of the early internet. It’s not a history lesson. It’s about ambition, reinvention, love, rivalry, failure, and the cost of making something that truly matters.

I won’t spoil anything, because you should absolutely watch it. Here’s the ultracondensed version:

Season 1 — building a breakthrough PC
Season 2 — creating an online gaming/social startup
Season 3 — scaling those ideas in Silicon Valley
Season 4 — shaping the first web browsers and search engines

Across all four seasons, it’s really about the messy, brilliant people who try to build the future.

And let me tell you: this is a hell of a slow burn, but the payoff is worth every second. I don’t think movies, TV shows, or games qualify as art unless they make you feel something powerful. This show did that — and then some. In fact, I think it may be one of the best TV dramas ever made.

The last half of the final season wrecked me. I broke down more than once watching it — full quivering-lip, stomach-tightening, ugly-crying breakdowns. Maybe it’s because I haven’t fully processed the passing of my wife and creative partner, the person I built this entire wild, artistic existence with. No show has ever pulled emotion out of the depths of my repression like this one.

But it didn’t just make me cry.
It also made me laugh — a lot.
It pissed me off.
It inspired me.
And, most importantly, it made me reflect on my own creative journey: the losses, the wins, the pivots, the people who stayed close, and the truth that it’s the journey that actually matters. Because none of us get out of here alive.

And the soundtrack?
Killer.
Perfectly chosen. One of the best-curated music selections I’ve heard in a TV series — every track enriching the emotional landscapes the show moves through.

If a piece of media can do all that — crack you open, make you laugh, piss you off, inspire you, and make you reflect on your own life — then it’s art. Full stop.

You can stream the entire series right now on AMC+.

And you should.
Because if it could break something open in me, it might just do the same for you.

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Now available in Hardcover and Kindle editions. Audible coming soon!