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

Hello and welcome to episode 269 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is John Kessel, who you may remember from our panel on The Man on the High

Castle back in episode 179. He's the author of such novels as Good News from outer space and corrupting Dr. Nice, and such short story collections as the pure product and the bomb plan for financial independence.

Together with James Patrick Kelly, he's edited anthologies such as ReWired,

Kafka-esque, Feeling Very Strange, and the Secret History of Science Fiction.

And he also teaches literature and creative writing at North Carolina State University.

And we'll be speaking with him today about his new novel, The Moon and the other. And now here's our interview with John Kessel.

All right, so we're here with John Kessel. Welcome to the show.

Hi, glad to be here, David.

Okay, so your new book is called The Moon and The Other.

So how did this book come about?

Oh gosh, it took a long time for me to write this book.

I was at it for. well in one way or another for 20 years, I wrote originally some stories set against the background that forms the background of the book. I first started thinking about this

alternate society called the Society of Cousins on the Moon back in the late

90s when my daughter was a little girl and I was thinking a lot about

male versus female. It's funny I just just in the news lately is this memo is written by this Silicon Valley guy talking about how he thinks there are biological differences between male and female brains and that explains a lot of their differences in

aptitude and behavior. In a way I was thinking along those lines although I find

that memo to be pretty deranged and full of pseudoscience.

But I was wondering about this basic question of,

you know, are there biological differences between men and women I obviously there are

biological differences but what what do they constitute what constitutes

...