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

Hello and welcome to episode 211 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Stephen Baxter.

He's the author of over 40 books, including the Zili series, the manifold series, and the Timeships, the only authorized sequel to H.G. Wells is The Time Machine.

He's also collaborated with Terry Pratchett on the Long Cosmos series,

and with Arthur C. Clark on books such as Times I and the Light of Other Days.

Baxter's latest book, which he wrote with Alster Reynolds, is called The Medusa Chronicles.

And now here's our interview with Stephen Baxter.

All right, so we're here with Stephen Baxter. All right, so we're here with Stephen Baxter.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

Okay, so your new book, which you wrote with Alster Reynolds, is called The Medusa Chronicles,

and it's a sequel to Arthur C. Clark's story a meeting with Medusa.

So first of all, just tell us about the original Arthur C. Clark story. What's that about?

Well, it's from 1971, and I think it's generally seen as his last really significant piece of short fiction.

I won a couple of awards, and it's about Jupiter.

The Medusa of the title is a life form that lives in the clouds at Jupiter. And the oldest comes from Carl Sagan, actually, you know, the great astronomer,

who hypothesized that somewhere in Jupiter's deep cloud layers.

You know, it's very hot at the center, cold at the top,

so somewhere in the middle, it will be earth-like.

And you could have a kind of great ocean, a gaseous ocean where gigantic creatures could live, and the Medusus are kind of well-like creatures, really.

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