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

Hello and welcome to episode 151 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is legendary fantasy and horror author Clive Barker.

He emerged in the mid-80s with a series of groundbreaking short story collections called The Books of Blood,

which prompted Stephen King to label him The Future of Horror.

He later adapted one of his stories, The Hellbound Heart,

into the classic horror film Hellraiser, which he wrote and directed.

A few years ago he fell into a coma as a result of toxic shock syndrome contracted from a routine

trip to the dentist.

He since made a dramatic recovery, though he continues to experience

lingering health effects from the coma. However, that hasn't stopped him from

producing new work at an astounding rate, including his latest novel, The Scarlet Gospels,

the final adventure of his popular character Pinhead,

star of the Hellraiser films.

And now here's our interview with Clive Barker.

All right, so we're here with Clive Barker. Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much indeed.

Okay, so your character Pinhead first appeared in a story called The Hellbound Heart.

You want to tell us about that?

Yeah, that's started the whole thing off many, many years ago.

And the character called Pinhead by Fran, was a minor character in that book, but people liked it. Not so much in the book, but they made the movie of it. But the movie came along, people really liked the character.

So when did you first get the idea that Pinhead was turning into

...