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

Hello and welcome to episode 202 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Joyce Carroll Oates.

She's the author of more than 70 books, including the national bestsellers,

We Were the Mulvaney's and Blond.

Among her many honors are the Penn Malamut Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National

Book Award.

And we'll be speaking with her today about her new book, The Dollmaster, and

other Tales of Terror.

And now here's our interview with Joyce Carol Oates.

All right, so we're here with Joyce Carroll Oates.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you. OK, so your new book is called The Dollmaster and Other Tales of Terror.

So just tell us a bit about the story behind this book and how it came about.

Well, the stories are written over a period of time, and I have an ongoing relationship

with Otto Penzer of the mysterious press.

So he's published a number of my novellas and short story

collections. I tend to write stories that accrue around certain themes or certain types of genre.

I'm very drawn to the surreal, not exactly fantasy, but the kind of fiction that leads into

another dimension, so to speak.

It has a, I think, a firmly realistic foundation

and then it eases into or morphs into this other dimension. So all the stories are in that of that genre.

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