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

Hello and welcome to episode 147 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Alex Garland.

His first novel, The Beach, was adapted into a feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Garland then worked with the director of that film, Danny Boyle,

on the movies 28 days later and Sunshine,

for which Garland wrote the screenplays.

He also wrote the screenplays for the recent films Never Let Me Go, based on the novel by

casual Ishiguro, and Dread, based on the British comic book character Judge Dread.

Garland also wrote and directed the new science fiction thriller X Mockina.

And now here's our interview with Alex Garland.

All right, so we're here with Alex Garland.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks.

Okay, so I mentioned that this is a show for fantasy and science fiction book fans primarily.

So I was just wondering, could we start and just talk about growing up?

What were some fantasy and science fiction books that were favorites of yours that got you

into the field?

The guy I kind of reached for, typically when I think of that, is J.G. Ballard, which, and they're books that would exist in this kind of floating state

between all sorts of different genres and in some respects they're just themselves, you know. Some of them are quite overtly sci-fi and some of

them aren't and they're in a sort of edge area and some of them are very grounded in a sense like Empire the Sun for example.

So Ballard then John Wyndham. I read a lot of John Wyndham when I was a kid and Ray Bradbury and and then inevitably there'd be

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