Ben Mezrich, author of the books that spawned the hit movies “21” and “The Social Network,” discusses his latest effort “Sex on the Moon,” which he’ll soon present at The Music Hall in Portsmouth.

Ben Mezrich goes to incredible lengths to bring readers a story that is both accurate and spellbinding, honest and riveting. He’s marched through airport security with a bunch of Vegas card-counters and $250,000 taped to his body. He’s done a face-to-face interview with a Japanese mafia boss in Osaka. And now, he’s befriended an ex-con who pulled off one of the biggest heists in American history.

Mezrich has written 12 books, including “Bringing Down the House” and “The Accidental Billionaires,” which were adapted into the blockbuster films “21” and “The Social Network,” respectively. His latest book is “Sex on the Moon,” which tells the story of Thad Roberts, a former NASA intern who stole millions of dollars worth of moon rocks from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Roberts, a brilliant and charismatic young man who dreamed of becoming the first person to walk on Mars, pulled off an unbelievably complex and daring crime. But his efforts to sell the merchandise were thwarted by a wary Belgian rock collector named Axel Emmermann. He served nearly eight years in prison, taking full blame for the heist to protect his three young accomplices, including the woman he adored.

The same team that produced “The Social Network” is now developing a film adaptation of “Sex on the Moon.” Mezrich, who will appear in the Writers on a New England Stage Series at The Music Hall on Thursday, July 21, recently spoke to The Wire about the book and his process for writing creative nonfiction with a cinematic twist.

Many of your books, “Sex on the Moon” included, deal with brilliant young college students who figure out a way to potentially strike it rich, often by illegal—or at least ethically questionable—means. What is it that attracts you to these sorts of scheming-whiz-kid stories?

I’ve always been interested in the genius-turned-rock star kind of story about brilliant kids who kind of live in that gray area between right and wrong. This is the first story I’ve written where the guy actually goes to the other side of the gray area and commits a crime. Zuckerberg you can argue one way or the other, but, you know, he’s an entrepreneur who may have stepped on some toes, but he didn’t do anything illegal. And the MIT kids, it was perfectly legal, it just was frowned upon. But this kid (Thad Roberts) really went through. He went in the other direction. I live vicariously through these guys, these crazy stories that involve money and sex and love and all these things that you want in your life, and it’s just an interesting way to live that by telling these stories.

How did you begin working on this particular story about Thad Roberts and the theft of moon rocks?

Well, this came from him. You know, I’d always wanted to write about NASA. I love NASA. But when you think of NASA, you always think of the ’60s. You think of the Apollo projects. You think of Tom Hanks flying around in some silver capsule. But the reality of NASA today is very different. So, what happened was, just out of the blue, I’d always been thinking about writing about NASA and I got a call from a mutual friend who said this kid had just gotten out of prison and he wanted me to tell his story. He’d seen my movies in prison, he had read my books, and he had just sort of been looking for someone to tell it. And what was amazing was no one had told this story before. I looked into it and there had been like one article in the LA Times, but NASA had done a good job of covering it up. So it was just one of those things.

What was Thad like in person?

He was a really charismatic, nice guy. And, you know, when you’re meeting a guy who just spent seven and a half years in prison, it’s kind of scary, so I made plans to meet him in a crowded lobby. But I got there and he’s just really nice, really smart, you know, sad. He had done something stupid. He had done it out of love, and it just didn’t work out. He spent a lot of time in jail for what he had considered kind of a college prank to keep his girlfriend impressed.

Were you able to talk to many of the other major players in the story, like (Thad’s girlfriend) Rebecca or (his ex-wife) Sonya or (his accomplice) Gordon?

I spent a lot of time with Axel Emmermann, the Belgian rock collector. The FBI agents did not want to talk, although, basically, I filed a freedom of information act so I got all the FBI files, including the transcripts of the wires the FBI agents were wearing when they took Thad down. I talked to a lot of people on the inside who are sort of undisclosed sources at NASA and stuff. The girls, you know, I went back and forth with the main girl but she really didn’t want me to write the story. She didn’t want anybody to know it, so I changed her name at her request. She’s not happy about it, obviously. She’s moved on with her life and didn’t really want to bring this all up again. But, you know, it is what it is. And, yeah, I talked to Gordon, the stoner guy. So I pretty much talked to everyone except for I didn’t have great access to the girls.

What about Everett Gibson (the astronaut whose lab was robbed)?

Well, NASA put out a company-wide missive that no one was allowed to talk to me. But Gibson did want to talk to me, so there was information coming through Axel Emmermann, who was still friends with him.

You obviously spent a great many hours interviewing Thad. Is it challenging to ask questions of people in a manner that gets them to really open up about their lives, even the unpleasant and unflattering parts?

Yeah, very hard. It took a good year before we were at a loophole where he was really telling me his honest feelings and opinions. He had a hard life. He grew up in a very hard background and was kicked out of his family house. He wasn’t immediately trusting, so it took a while. And it took me a while to trust him, because in the beginning he was not necessarily telling me the truth. But as I got the FBI files and found out more (he eventually opened up).

You’ve presented Thad Roberts in a largely sympathetic light. If you just look at the facts, this is a young man who was cheating on his wife, who got his barely 20-year-old mistress and another young woman involved in the commission of a serious crime, and who stole a national treasure from NASA. Did you ever feel like you were romanticizing his story?

I definitely knew there was something about the story that intrigued me on sort of a cinematic level, so yes, there is that aspect of it. At the same time, I tried to give the whole honest story. I mean, I still feel bad for Thad, but I also say he did commit this crime and served an enormous amount of time for it. Seven and a half years is a lot of time. It’s more than some murderers get. So there is that aspect of it, but the guy did something wrong and he paid for it, and he admits that. So I don’t think it glorifies the crime, because you look at the results. I think the crime itself was amazing and audacious and something you do want to read about, but at the same time there was a penalty for it.

Thad may never have actually committed this crime if the FBI hadn’t tricked him into thinking he could make $100,000 off it. In a way, it’s almost like the FBI coaxed him into committing the crime and then arrested him for it.

That’s the question: where does it become entrapment? And I don’t think this is entrapment. Thad could have stopped at any point he wanted to, so Thad did commit the crime. But at the same time, if there hadn’t been a buyer, would he have done it? Umm, that’s a great question. Probably not. But, at the same time, he went off on the Internet looking for someone to buy it, so if it hadn’t been Axel Emmermann it might have been someone else. So, if the FBI hadn’t done anything, this kid might have committed the crime and gotten away with it.

Also, it seems like Thad really kind of got screwed in court. His lawyer didn’t think he would get more than three years, and he was initially sentenced to more than eight. And it seemed like that was partly because the judge had a vendetta.

Well, the judge had a good reason, though. The judge’s thinking is that it had to do with these notebooks. Everett Gibson said that in the safe were these green notebooks that were his life’s work, and by stealing this safe, that had ruined this man’s life’s work. And that’s an enormous thing, and I think the judge believed that. And it’s very believable. I mean, this man is an eminent scientist, there’s no reason not to believe that. So, if that’s the case, than Thad did much more than just stealing moon rocks. It was a huge sentence, and it wasn’t something Thad expected or his lawyer expected or anybody else on the case expected. But the judge did make an example out of him. So, it’s hard to objectively look at it now and try and decide if the judge was wrong or not.

What did Thad have to say about the notebook issue? It seems like this weird hole in the story.

He doesn’t remember ever seeing them, he never saw them, he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He said the FBI didn’t find anything and he returned everything he wasn’t using and he doesn’t know what the guy was talking about. So, I mean, who knows? There’s no way to know.

“Sex on the Moon” is already being developed into a movie. At this point, do you have the potential of a film adaptation in mind when you’re writing?

I do. I definitely think and write very cinematically. And now, since “The Social Network,” I definitely know I have a good shot of making whatever I write into a film. So I guess I think that way. This one is great because it’s being developed by the same producers and studio as “The Social Network.” It’s got (producers) Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti and Kevin Spacey all together again. It’s just gonna be awesome.

Is there a timeframe for the film?

I know they’re starting early, so I don’t know how long it will be, but it’s definitely moving along real quick.

With this sort of creative nonfiction, it must take an immense amount of work to first gather all the raw facts and then string them together into a cohesive and exciting narrative that could be a movie. How do you approach that process?

Yeah, I mean, it’s a process. You get all the information, you get the court documents. I have lawyers who help me do that. You file with the FBI and then interview everyone you can. It’s a lot of work. You travel a lot. And once you have everything, the writing is actually the shortest part of the process. But the research definitely takes about a year. You’ve got to get everything you can, and it takes some time.

Is it difficult to strike a balance where you’re trying to dramatize a story but still remain true to the facts and be accurate?

Well, for me, I mean, listen, I stand by the story. I think everything in “Sex on the Moon” is true. Everything in “The Accidental Billionaires” is true. I get attacked a lot because of my style, and I know it’s controversial in the sort of nonfiction world. But it’s taking all the facts and all the documentation and writing it in a cinematic fashion. For me, it’s not hard. I don’t feel like it’s ever sort of a struggle one way or the other. I know what happened in the scene, and then I draw the scene as I see it. I have all the facts, I know what was said in the conversations, and then I write the dialogue. For me, it isn’t an issue. I know there are journalists out there who do have an issue with it, which I understand. I understand their reasoning. But I don’t think it’s any different than writing a biography of Abraham Lincoln, someone who died a long time ago who you can’t know anything about other than the facts. Or with Cleopatra, right? (laughs). All nonfiction is this way. For me, it’s enhanced because it’s written in such a cinematic way, but I think it’s no different than any other nonfiction books.

Were you pleased with the film adaptations of “The Accidental Billionaires” and “Bringing Down the House”?

Oh yeah, they were fantastic, and they were both fantastic for their own reasons. (Screenwriter) Aaron Sorkin and (director) David Fincher are just so good, and to have an Oscar-worthy movie is just amazing. And then “21” was the kind of movie every 21-year-old kid watches on his way to Vegas.

“The Social Network,” in particular, while a great movie that won a lot of acclaim, has some marked differences from the book. Do those disparities bother you, or are you OK with some creative license?

No, I love what Sorkin did, with putting the courtroom scenes in. It was awesome. And they weren’t in my book because the scope of my book is only one year. His scope was much bigger, but I think he made all the right choices. And I think with “21” also. I mean, I love the action sequences. I thought it was fun. I’m not one of these—I guess the word would be “greedy” or whatever. I don’t think it all has to be exactly as I wrote it. I think Aaron won the Oscar because he adapted it in such a way that it enhanced the material, which is exactly what you want.

What’s the most memorable or exciting or scariest thing you’ve done while researching a book?

Well, I mean, definitely Vegas was memorable. We were walking around Vegas with a duffel bag with a million dollars in cash in it. You kind of can’t beat that (laughs). I’ve been in some scrapes. I’ve been in Osaka while writing “Ugly Americans” and had to interview a Yakuza crime lord, and it was a pretty intense experience. So there have been some moments, but I guess those are the two that stand out.

Going back to “Sex on the Moon,” there are really fascinating segments of the book that are just describing these awesome NASA facilities and equipment. Did you tour NASA and see a lot of this stuff firsthand?

NASA didn’t want me to do this book and they were not cooperative, I guess the word is. But I did a “Level 9 Tour,” it’s called, where you go to the very internal core of NASA. I just signed up and went, and they take a very small group of people through. And while I was doing it, Thad Roberts was texting me, saying “This is where I would eat” when we were passing through the cafeteria. It was a really cool situation where I was getting a tour by Thad (laughs). It was awesome. I love NASA. I think it’s the most amazing place around and I think we should continue to fund it forever.

So, with Thad Roberts out of the running, who’s gonna be the first person to walk on Mars? Any predictions?

That’s a great question. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there. I hope we do. It’s still a ways away. But it’s a good dream, you know? It’s one of those things you have to strive for, the technology has to change and getting there will be hard, but I think one day, one day.

Do you have a next project in mind, or are you just focused on this book tour?

I’m focused on this book and this tour. I’m working on a couple television show ideas. One of them is a documentary show where I go inside different stories every week. But overall, I don’t have any specific hook yet. I’m just sitting here waiting for the next guy to call me (laughs). We’ll see what’s next.

Ben Mezrich will read from “Sex on the Moon” at 7:30 p.m. on July 21 at The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 603-436-2400, www.themusichall.org. Tickets are $13.