Robert Sheckley, author of classic stories such as "Is That What People Do?" and "Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?," was one of the top sci-fi authors of the 1950s. Humor writer Tom Gerencer corresponded with Sheckley regularly for nearly a decade. "He was so open to talking to me, this nobody who just liked him, and answering my questions about writing, and about his work," Gerencer says in Episode 475 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "He was just an amazing man, an amazing talent, but also just an amazingly kind, gracious person." Sheckley's brand of mordant cynicism helped pave the way for writers such as Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and J.G. Ballard, and his novels Dimension of Miracles and The Prize of Peril prefigured genre classics such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Running Man. "A lot of his ideas are so prescient," Gerencer says.

Tom Gerencer's book Intergalactic Refrigerator Repairmen Seldom Carry Cash features 19 pieces of humorous science fiction. Gerencer selected the stories out of literally hundreds that he's written over the past two decades. "If you go to Walmart, and you go into the section with the big Tupperware bins that you can put clothes and stuff in, I would just write and write and write, and fill a notebook with short stories--or fragments of short stories--and then I would put them into the bin, and then I would fill another notebook and put that in the bin, and fill another notebook, and now I have five or six bins in the basement, and there are several bins that I lost at some point," Gerencer says in Episode 473 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It is certainly an avalanche of words." With titles like "Trailer Trash Savior" and "Apocalyptic Nostrils of the Moon," you might expect the stories to be light-hearted, but Gerencer's work also contains a dark streak of existential angst, frequently dealing with questions such as: How can we be happy?

BBC America's science fiction show Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is based on a pair of novels by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Science fiction author Tom Gerencer loves the idea of Dirk Gently--a detective who trusts in fate and leaves everything up to chance. "He's not a brilliant detective," Gerencer says in Episode 281 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast, "but in a way he's making these other brilliant realizations that step completely off logic and go into the realm of'let go of all that stuff and get into the flow of things, and you're going to find that things work out a lot better for you that way.'" The show has a lot going for it, including an original voice, brilliant writing, and complex characters, but it's failed to connect with many viewers. Writer Leah Schnelbach loves how the show's many mysteries slowly come together, but acknowledges that Dirk Gently can be a challenge for newcomers.