You're in the Paracast. You're in the Paracast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.

And now, here's Gene Steinberg.

With Gene and with him, this week we welcome James Reich.

I'm going to be talking about amongst other things, Wilhelm Reich.

And obviously the question when one asks here, James, are you related in any way to Wilhelmreich?

I wish the story was that glamorous, Gene. Thank you for having me. But unfortunately not. It's just one of those interesting synchronicities that make the promotion and writing of a book on Wilhelm Reich a little bit more challenging. It always furnishes a good opening question. But no, unfortunately, I can't claim that.

Interesting that you got involved in this. I'm going to ask that later,

but you have a long background in writing, and that includes sci-fi.

So before we're going to science fiction, when we're moved from science fiction to science fact,

I'm going to ask you then, how did you start writing science fiction?

I guess I could start very early.

I was really interested in, actually like Wilhelm Reich was, I was affected by the narrative

of the War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells. That was subsequent to a more conventional non-science

fiction interests. I was very interested in the poetry of

Dylan Thomas, and I was interested in Dadaism, the strange rebellious art form of the 19thines

through to the beginning of surrealism in 1924. But I was always fascinated by science fiction stories from quite a young age.

I really took it up as a writing vocation subsequent to discovering the more experimental side,

not least Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, and the science fiction tendencies, I would say, of, say, William Burroughs and Kathy

Acker.

But yeah, I loved science fiction.

I was slightly terrified of it because it posed such frightening existential questions.

I came to it as a writer quite late, I would say.

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