Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 101 of Geek's Guides of the Galaxy.

Later in today's show, guest geeks John Langen and

Cat Howard will be joining me to discuss writers as characters in books and

movies.

But first up, we've got an interview with legendary science fiction writer Joe Haldman,

author of the classic 1974 novel The Forever War.

That book and many of Joe's other works are based on his experience being drafted to fight in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat.

His most recent book is a thriller called Work Done for Hire.

So Joe Haldeman, welcome to the show.

Hi, glad to be here.

All right, and so your new book is called Work Done for Higher,

and it's the story of a man named Jack Daly.

You want to just tell us about him?

Well, Jack Daly is a guy who was drafted into a slightly future army, just, you know, maybe as

little as ten years from now.

And having trained as a sniper,

he goes off to a place that they just called the desert.

And I think that it's Iran, but I'm not sure what what it is I don't really care because he's back from it when the story starts and he was wounded

He lost a finger from another sniper evidently, but you know he's getting along okay

he's got a little disability pension and he's writing and basically when the story opens up he gets this an interesting

contract offer to write a treatment for a movie and then within a few days he gets a

...