Hi, I'm David Bar-Curtly, author of the book Save Me Please and other stories, and welcome to episode 612 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is David P. Silverman. He's one of America's best-known atheist activists, famous for his debates with Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

And he also organized the 2012

reason rally in Washington, D.C., the largest gathering of atheists in world history. He served

as president of American atheists and executive director of Atheist Alliance International,

and he currently serves as advisory board chair of Atheists for Liberty.

And in this interview, we'll be discussing his nonfiction book Fighting God,

an atheist manifesto for a religious world,

and his new science fiction novella Darkshiner.

And now here's your interview with David P. Silverman.

All right, so we're here with David P. Silverman.

Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on, David. I'm happy to be here. Okay, so first of all, how did you get interested in science fiction? Oh, well, that goes all the way back. I've been a science fiction person since I was a kid. I used to watch Doctor Who when I was a little kid and Star Trek. That was it.

When I was growing up, it was Dr.

Who and Star Trek.

I'm one of those kids that saw Star Trek every day when he came back from school.

And I kind of, you know, adapted into it.

I was very into it.

And then when Star Wars came out, well, Star Wars came out and when that kind of changed everything for me as a kid because, you know, that just blew me away.

And I am one of those people that was always, you know, on the fence between Star Trek or Star Wars.

I'm kind of both. I've always been that way.

And so was it mostly the movies and TV shows, or were you into novels as well?

No, it was always movies and TV shows. I wasn't much of a reader as a kid, not into science fiction reading, but I saw every movie and watched every episode. And sometimes it got me

...