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

Hello and welcome to episode 190 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Christopher Buckley, author of such satirical novels as Little Green Men,

Booms Day, and Supreme Courtship.

His novel Thank You for Smoking was adapted into a 2005 film

starring Aaron Eckhart. Buckley is also the author of Losing Moment Pop, a memoir

about the death of his parents, socialite Patricia Buckley, and conservative commentator William F Buckley.

Christopher Buckley's new novel, The Relock Master, is his first foray into historical fiction,

and describes a mad cap scheme by Albrecht Durer to forge the shroud of Turin.

And now here's our interview with Christopher Buckley.

All right, so we're here with Christopher Buckley.

Welcome to the show.

Good to be with you.

Okay, so I first became a fan of yours back in college when I came across your book Little Green Men,

which obviously caught my eye as a science fiction fan.

So I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about how that book came about?

Well, that was a book about a stuffy Washington pundit. Imagine such a creature existing as a stuffy

Washington pundit who becomes the victim of a secret government program to foster belief in UFOs so as to promote space programs and weapons programs and

they and weapons programs.

And they, this program is run out of the basement of the,

I think it's the agriculture department or the Social Security Administration.

You know, this is a guy who doesn't really have much to do.

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