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

Hello and welcome to episode 160 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Wesley Chu, author of the humorous sci-fi action novel The Lives of Tao,

his new novel Time Salvager, about a time travel agency that scavenges resources from the past is currently being adapted for film by Michael Bay.

And now here's our interview with Wesley Chu.

All right, so we're here with Wesley Chu. Welcome to the show.

Hey, how's it going?

Good.

Good.

Okay, so first of all, just tell us a bit about your background as a science fiction fan.

Just how did you get into it?

I actually got into it through fantasy.

So when I was a, I think when I was in,

a little kid, my dad, who was an English professor, took me to a bookstore and he told me,

you know, you could buy, or I will buy you whatever book you want, and at the time he, you know,

basically as an English professor he wanted he's like

steering me towards like Shakespeare or like Bail for something like that and instead I

ran toward all the books of the pretty pictures although I the auction not the pretty pictures, but the pretty pictures of like Manticores and like Magic Swords.

So my very first two books were a spell for chameleon by Piers Anthony and

the Misenchanted sword by Lawrence Walt Evans.

Yeah, yeah, and also I heard you say Robert Asprin, you read when you were kid?

I read like the first, I want to say the first nine myth books.

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