Hi, I'm David Barr-Curtly, author of the book Save Me Please and other stories, and welcome to

episode 622 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy. Today on the show we'll be discussing M. John

Harrison's Cosmic Horror Space Opera Novel Light, the first book in the Kefahoochie

Tract trilogy. And this will include spoilers for everything in the book, so just be aware of that.

And I'm joined by my good friend Philip Gillette, who you may remember from our feature

interview back in episode 585, and from our panel on The History of Sword and Sorcery back in

episode 603.

He's the writer and director of the horror films The Bleeding House and They Remain.

And he's also been a writer for movies such as The Spine of Night and the Europa Report,

TV shows such as Secret Level and Love Death and Robots, and video games such as Amnesia the

bunker and the upcoming Ontos.

And now here's your interview with Philip Gillette.

All right, so we're here with Philip Gillette. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much. All right, so first of all,

just tell us back your history. You're reading M. John Harrison. Okay. So I knew you're going to ask

me this question. And I was thinking back on how I first learned about him as a writer. And actually,

it's determined by two events in my life. One, and I may have told you about this before,

but sometime in my early 20s, I was reading an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, and she mentioned

China Mayville as being an author who was great. So I read him,

and then he also is a huge fan of M. John Harrison. So I came across his name that way. And the other

way I learned about him is that at some point, probably in the mid-2000s, I was drunk in a bar with,

and in the bar on the lower east side of Manhattan, talking to a man from New Zealand,

who I knew at the time, I don't remember his name, I don't remember how I knew him,

...