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

Hello and welcome to episode 168 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Today on the show we'll be discussing some of the books in the new Star Wars Canon, and

I'm joined by two guests.

So first up we've got Chuck Wendick. As a game designer he's contributed over 2 million

words of material to the game industry and he blogs about writing and pop culture at

terrible minds.com. He also co-wrote the short film Pandemic and his recent books include Mockingbird and Zeros.

His new Star Wars novel Aftermath is the first book in the new Star Wars canon to be set between

Return of the Jedi and the upcoming film Star Wars

episode 7 The Force Awakens. So Chuck welcome to the show. Hey thanks for having me.

And also joining us today is Alexandra Bracken. She's a New York Times best-selling author who wrote her first published book,

Brightly Woven, as a student at the College of William and Mary. She's also the author of the

Darkest Mind series of near future thrillers, which have been optioned for film by 20th

century Fox. Her new novel Star Wars episode for A New Hope, The Princess, The Scoundrel

and The Farm Boy, presents a fresh retelling of the original Star Wars film. So Alex, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Okay, so let's start out and have you guys talk a bit about your background to Star Wars fans.

And Alex, I want to start with you because I know you have an interesting story about that.

I do. I have actually grown up with Star Wars in a very real way. My dad, right up until he passed away a couple years ago, was a Star Wars Wars collector pretty much from the time I was in first grade so about age five I'm through the many decades and so every weekend it just became kind of a routine of going to the toy stores who was on like a first name basis with the store managers at Toys R Us.

So we got to go into the back room to find the new toys that were coming out every week.

And this was the Power of the Force era in the 90s, I should specify.

But we were also going to a whole bunch of antique stores and shows trying to find a lot of the older the

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