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

Hello and welcome to episode 165 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is N. K. Jemison, author of the inheritance trilogy and the Dream Blood series.

Her latest novel, The Fifth Season, is set in a world constantly racked by natural disasters, where

sorcerers who can control earthquakes and volcanoes are both feared and valued.

And now here's our interview with N. K. Jemison.

All right, so we're here with N. K. Jemison. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Okay, so first of all, just tell us a bit about what some of the books were that really got you interested in fantasy and

science fiction? I was a giant fan of Tanneth Lee, of Octavia Butler, of CS Friedman,

you know, kind of all over the place in terms of my interests.

But I've also, you know, mentioned another interviews that I read a lot of or read a lot of mythology, especially as a child and as a teenager.

Well, so how about those authors you mentioned? What are some of the things about their work that really drew you to them?

I liked the way that Tanneth Lee... about their work that really drew you to them?

I liked the way that Tannethly played with conceptualizations

of good and evil and also the way in which

in a lot of her work she emulated that sort of ancient epic style.

So for example with the Knights Master, Death's Master, I can't remember what that series is called, but it felt very sort of

oral tradition recorded on paper even though you knew that she had made it up, but she was able to capture the feel of stories that had been passed down and stories that had kind of grown apocryphal with retelling and things like that.

And I like the way that she played with concepts of who the hero was.

You know, you started off with, I think Azran was the first books

protagonist and who's a terrible person and then over the course of the story, well, terrible God, I mean over the course of the story, well terrible God, and over the course of the story you started to see so much more complexity to them.

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