On the 30th Anniversary of the first publication of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes And Another Thing…, the sixth book of the series penned by Artemis Fowl novelist Eoin Colfer. Colfer discusses his reluctance to take on the project and his hopes for the future of Hitchhiker’s.

Dune author Frank Herbert’s son discusses picking up his father’s threads in Winds of Dune, out this month, and his hopes for Peter Berg’s film adaptation of the saga.

I got involved in writing the screenplay for the film Vercingetorix, la Legende du Druide Roi or Druids as it is known outside of France, and collaborated on endless versions of it with the producer-director. What was shot was something like version 14. But several friends of mine read version 3, and insisted that it was a masterpiece and should not be lost. And so, after the film was released and bombed, I re-read it myself, was saddened and rather angered at what it had turned into, and decided that they were right, so it became a novel.

Alice is a fascinating individual. While earning her Bachelors degree at Webster University she studied the worldwide distribution of folkloric creatures such as lake serpents like Ogopogo, Bigfoot and the Chupacabra, topics near and dear to my heart. She went on to earn her Masters in Folklore from the University of Oregon, were she translated the Mabinogi. Who else do you know that can cuss in Medieval Welsh?

Alice has since made a name for herself working at Lucasfilm Ltd., and writing Star Wars gaming and video strategy guides including the best selling Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars: Battle for Naboo manuals published by LucasArts Ltd (in house). She also wrote Prima’s Official Strategy Guide to Obi Wan and the hint book for the Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns (an expansion pack) that were published by Prima (a division of Random House). She is currently writing novels for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. She is an active member of the Horror Writer’s Association.

Terry Pratchett, or Terryho Pratchetta as they say in the Czech Republic, needs no introduction. If you haven’t heard of him, then good God where’ve you been? Terry’s sold millions of books over the years and I won’t bore you to tears with the numbers here but the sales statistics at least for the UK market are staggering. He’s even made the best sellers list on Pluto so saying you’ve never heard of him because you’re an alien who’s just arrived on Earth won’t cut the mustard or the cheese any longer.

Pratchett was born in 1948 in the city of Beaconsfield in the Buckinghamshire, England. He is best known for his Discworld series and is considered one of the best satirists writing today and is often compared to the likes of Douglas Adams, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and P.G. Wodehouse. His first published work, “The Hades Business” appeared in 1963 in Science Fantasy magazine. His second short story, “Night Dweller” appeared in 1965 in New Worlds magazine. His first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971.

Roger Cardinal originally coined the term “outsider art” in 1972 to describe Jean Dubuffet’s eccentric but excellent work, but it should have been coined for Richard Calder. Richard has made a career of providing us with a super-surging, neuron burning, paradigm shift when it comes to ground-breaking genre fiction. Legendary genre writers like Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad have sung his praises on the public record and with good reason. Calder is a literary maverick. He started off normal and boring enough as an English Literature professor at the University of Sussex. But being born in the same place as the Ratcliffe Highway murders and the infamous Jack the Ripper murders, Whitechapel, London, something dark and loathe like the ghost of Egyptian outcast god Setesh or Johnny Rotten crept into his psyche at an impressionable age. Something began calling to him, moving him to paint previously unexposed wordscapes of unparalleled diversity and peculiarity.

Puddle jumping around from London to Nongkhai, Thailand to the Philippines he absorbed many influences from around the world. From his debut novel Dead Girls, to the sequel Dead Boys, to such astonishing novels as Cythera, Frenzetta, Impakto and Lord Soho, Richard always seems to grasp the sense of the alien. He finds a way to expose the remote and uncomfortable. He forces us to stare into the sun until the penumbra of predictable culture and bland behaviour is forevermore burned away.

Storm Constantine is an imaginative and prolific writer. But don’t just take my word for it. Michael Moorcock hails her as a “goth rock and roll queen and a writer of fine literary fantasy” and Neil Gaiman stated that he “wouldn’t swap her for a dozen Anne Rices.” You can also keep Terry Pratchett as well, for my money no one can beat either Nalo Hopkinson or Storm Constantine for creative genius in the speculative fiction world.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss at length all things myth and reality, life and death, ice cream and sherbet, Coke or Virgin cola with Storm. By the way, Storm prefers Coke over Virgin Cola, and we both agree that Virgin Cola tastes a lot like RC (Royal Crown) Cola.

Every so often a genre writer comes along whose work just jumps out at me. Greg Bear is one, Neil Gaiman is one. Scott Nicholson is another. I was born in Appalachia and lived a decent amount of my life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, so Scott’s work is near and dear to my heart. Growing up there, ghost stories were an almost nightly entertainment. My grandmother loved to spin a good yarn. Living in the mountains of North Carolina, Scott too, is a product of that environment. He’s the author of the Appalachian Gothic thrillers The Harvest, The Red Church, The Manor, The Home and his latest thriller, The Farm. Proceed onward for a vivid snapshot into the life of a unique talent.