Do you know a writer? Give them this book. Are you now, or have you ever been, a writer? Get this book.

J. Michael Straczynski’s memoir Becoming Superman takes us into his grandparents’ and parents lives, through his own impoverished, deeply messed-up childhood, through his early life as a writer, and finally into the ups and downs he’s faced making a career in Hollywood. Along the way he meets Rod Serling, becomes friends with Harlan Ellison, joins the Jesus Movement (briefly), writes for everything from The Twilight Zone to The Real Ghostbusters, completely revolutionizes the way stories are told on television with Babylon 5, and creates one of the best-ever Netflix originals with Sense8. All while trying to solve a real-life murder mystery in his family’s past, and giving us a detailed look at the pathology of abuse.

And he dispenses solid writing advice throughout the book.

Maybe most important, though, he’s given us a book whose animating principle is a consideration of choice. How does a person raised without a sense of morality make decent choices? Can they change, and if so, how? How does a desperately poor, abused kid learn how to make moral and artistic choices he can be proud of?

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