Following our last episode with Richard Sparks on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which we must have mentioned The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at least, ooh, I don't know, at least three times, and after which we lost radio contact with Brian Sexton after he was devoured by the Black Sinkhole of Sligo, we decided to plough on with the second half of the interview.

So, on a tight schedule (Richard had tickets for the opera, meladdo) we delved into his debut novel, New Rock, New Role, an epic fantasy derived from Richard's own love of gaming, It's a funny and touching tale of finding purpose, friendship and adventure later in life, when all the signs tell that life may have finished dishing out adventures.

This was pertinent to Richard as he wrote this novel, his first, in his seventies. So we talk about the convetions of gaming, the friendships you make, the conventions of fantasy and the comfort and community it brings.

Elsewhere, Captain Halfmilkcarton gets the shock of his life when he's joined by an unexpected but remarkably familiar guest...

Hi!

Hi!

Hi there!

Wow.

Wow.

Wow!

This is beautiful.

This is so beautiful.... I might just buy it.

Dan and Brian are joined by - DON'T PANIC - the comedy writer Richard Sparks about Douglas Adams' seminal SF comic masterpiece, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Hitchhiker's Guide has influenced the culture in innumerable ways, but no one really knew it was going to be such a smash hit.

Neither Adams nor Sparks, contemporaries in the late 1970s/early 1980s comedy scene in London, predicted how big the book would be. Richard talks to us about his experiences of working with Adams, how the book was born of the early alternative comedy scene, and why it still resonates today.

Richard Sparks is a comedy writer who cut his teeth on various TV shows, working for HTV (Wales) ITV (Southern and Central) and the BBC . He's written for the stage, both original plays and adaptations of Goldoni comedies), and done a lot of freelance script editing. He now lives in Los Angeles, and has recently turned his hand to MMORPGS and writing comic fantasy novels, beginning with his gaming-based series, New Rock, New Role.

We're back! For our newest episode Pete and Dan are joined by Aparna Verna, the author of the breakout fantasy novel The Phoenix King, published by Orbit. Originally Aparna was invited onto the show to talk about Neil Gaiman's 1996 hit novel and TV show Neverwhere, but in light of the recent allegations against Gaiman, we've decided not to release that episode, though we may do so in the future as events play out.

In this interview we talk to Aparna about how the Phoenix King came to be, about its evolution, its fusion of western fantasy structures and Indian mythological frameworks, and it crosses romance, adventure and fantasy to create a new angle on centuries-old storytelling conventions. We talk about Aparna's excellent social media game, one of the contributing factors to her book's success, and her successful leveraging of crowdfunding to self-publish the original novel on which The Phoenix King is based.

Aparna Verma was born in Rajasthan, India, and grew up in the United States. She graduated from Stanford University with Honors in the Arts and a B.A. in English. In 2021, she self-published The Boy with Fire, which quickly went viral on TikTok, and was later republished by Orbit Books as The Phoenix King in 2023.

When she is not writing, Aparna likes to lift heavy (arm days are her favorite), dance to Bollywood music, and find cozy cafes to read myths from ancient worlds. You can connect with Aparna on TikTok at @aparnawrites, and Twitter and Instagram at @spirited_gal.