Dragon Con has a quieter award that sits alongside its fan-voted Dragon Awards, and it has always been the one with the stranger guest list. The Julie Award — named for Julius “Julie” Schwartz, the comics and SF editor who spent decades bridging those worlds — is given for “universal achievement spanning multiple genres,” and recipients are selected by a panel of industry professionals rather than a ballot. Ray Bradbury took the first one in 1998. Later years have wandered through Nimoy, Gaiman, Alice Cooper, Stan Lee, Harlan Ellison, and similar company. On September 6, 2026, at Dragon Con’s fortieth anniversary in Atlanta, the name on the trophy was Richard “Lord British” Garriott.

Coverage for this has mostly awards roundups — File 770 has a rundown of all the awards, and there’s a longer weekend piece at FanBolt — rather than sit-downs about what the honor meant to him. Happily, Garriott himself posted about the Julie the next day (on his X account), with a photo from the night.

Before the awards stage, though, there was a panel — and that is where John Hosie (Houston Dragon) just happened to be. His report on the session with Garriott, Starr Long, and Chris Spears, can be found on the Ultima Dragons Facebook group, and this is where things get rather interesting:

So, excellent panel with Lord British, but also with Starr Long and Chris Spears attending. The first 20 minutes was RG going through the base Ultima history and his experience, with also touching notably on Starr Long’s work leading UO’s development originally.

The issue with the Ultima IP falls under the 203 Copyright laws where RG notified EA of his intent to reclaim the Ultima copyrights under the 35 year rule as the initial assigner as creator. This does NOT include trademarks, which is why EA immediately filed after getting notice. They are in further discussion and negotiations to determine if he can fully recapture it. Otherwise, he’s wanting to get the “band” back together, but hasn’t fully fleshed what their intention would be, from single player RPG to MMO.

The last 30 minutes of the panel dealt with the use of AI tools ethically, notably for some of RG’s own fan projects, but also Chris Spears (Atos) using tools to clean up code for Shroud of the Avatar, as well as converting to recorded voice lines using an AI database that credits and compensates the original actor. Starr Long is no longer in game development, but works in security based software, and had his own thoughts as any AI platforms he is even allowed to use requires non-cloud access, and using only locally controlled data. The ultimate point was while they are aware of the dangers and very real ethical concerns, they are also cognizant that the technology is there and will be used in the industry. Their goal is to keep it as honest and transparent as possible. There’s also a booze recipe from LB, which I will post when I get to a good spot 🙂

Houston’s floor report lines up with the quieter story that has been circulating since mid-year, when Inside Games’ Brian Gaar got Garriott on the phone after EA’s fresh Ultima trademark filings set the rumor mill spinning. The short version — which MrPaladin also laid out cleanly in a September 27 X post — is that copyright and trademark are not the same animal. Under the U.S. 35-year termination right, a creator can claw back copyrights transferred decades earlier; because EA bought Origin Systems in 1992, the window for the Ultima copyright to be clawed back opens in 2027. Trademarks stay with whoever keeps filing them, which is why the name on the box is still a separate fight.

Garriott’s own words to Gaar (you can hear the exchange in an Inside Games’ YouTube segment; PC Gamer picked up the same quotes) are the ones I keep coming back to.

On the long wait:

And so, I have been waiting… finally, the time has come!

On what the reclaim does and does not buy him:

Lord British’s Ultima will regain all the copyrights of my original work. What it will become is the next challenge.

He also told Gaar that every decade or so he has tried to talk EA into a revival, and the talks tended to start politely and then evaporate. None of that is “a new Ultima ships next Tuesday” type of announcement. Instead, it is a legal hypotheis, which could one day lead to a working title with his handle on it. Left open is the question about the form any such title might take — single-player, MMO, something in between — that the Dragon Con panel itself still treated as unfinished business.

Houston also snapped slides from the room on the topic of “What was the Essence of an Ultima?” which featured the usual Garriott checklist of concepts.

I’d previously downplayed rumours suggesting that there might be some way for Lord British to return to the throne of Britannia in a new, non-EA-developed title, but this collection of stories is making me rethink at least a little bit of my skepticism in this regard. There’s still what is likely a long road ahead, and quite a lot of things that need to happen for a Richard Garriott-helmed Ultima to happen again, but it does at least seem like there is a (perhaps narrow) way that it could one day happen.

In the meantime: congratulations to Lord British on the Julie. And thanks to Houston Dragon for sitting the panel and writing it up for the rest of us!