Of all the people who are partially responsible for Friday's much-anticipated Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy—studio head Kevin Feige, co-stars Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana, Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin for pioneering Marvel's "cosmic" stories—the most surprising one might be scientist Richard Feynman. Not that the celebrated physicist known for his work in the fields of quantum mechanics and nanotechnology contributed directly to the movie in any way (having died in 1988, that would've been unlikely), but without Feynman, GotG screenwriter Nicole Perlman might never have gotten involved in writing in the first place.

"Science was my gateway drug," Perlman says, "so I tried to see if I could apply my interest in science stories to actual science—and discovered that the nitty gritty is a lot less exciting than the stories."

Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, which is home to a number of aerospace companies, Perlman's father's weekly book club was filled with ... well, there's no other way to put it: "A lot of people in that book club were rocket scientists." And many of them were former students of Feynman from his time at Caltech. "I grew up hearing stories about him, and just being immersed in this pro-science-fiction, pro-science background," she says.

Nicole Perlman. Ben Rasmussen/WIRED

As a teenager, Perlman idolized the physicist the way some of her peers admired Tiger Beat cover boys. "He was my childhood crush object," she confesses, laughing. "I had printed out pictures of Feynman from the Caltech website when I was in high school. When my friends had pictures of Keanu Reeves on their wall, I had pictures of a dead physicist."

But when she was 16, her father gave her a biography of the scientist, and everything changed. "I loved the way that he could explain these incredible mysteries about the universe; there was something about the way in which he made it seem like you could explain this to anybody in the world, you just needed the right communicator," she said. "That was what seemed miraculous about it. These amazing, lofty ideas, weren't walled off from not-particularly-brilliant high school students like myself. It was inspiring."

Literally inspiring, as it turns out. In college, Perlman's first screenplay, Challenger, was about Feynman's time on the Rogers Commission investigating the Challenger disaster, something she describes as "a love letter" to the scientist. From there, she went on to write more screenplays based on real-life scientists and scientific exploration, including one about Neal Armstrong, which eventually brought her to the attention of Marvel Studios, where she was part of the shortlived 2009 writers program.

The program was a chance to "bridge the gap" between what she'd been doing and what she'd been wanting to do as a screenwriter, she says, adding that she "had found a little bit of resistance in Hollywood—especially as a female writer, it gets harder to do larger projects." As part of the Marvel Writers Program, Perlman was able to choose a property to develop; the one she chose is now on track to be one of the biggest August openings in movie history.

"They gave me an option of about half a dozen different properties they thought would make a good movie," she says. "I chose Guardians because it was space-based, and I thought I could have a lot of fun with it."

And indeed, Guardians is one of the most fun (and funny) films to come out of Marvel Studios yet. But the difference between Guardians of the Galaxy back in 2009 and today, of course, is that only hardcore Marvel fans were familiar with the characters back then. "For two and a half years, I'd tell people I was working on a Marvel screenplay called Guardians of the Galaxy, and everybody said, 'what's that? I've never heard of it,'" Perlman remembers. "I wish I could go back to myself in 2009 and say 'This is going to happen! People are going to know what you're working on!'"

One drawback of choosing a relatively obscure property was the research, although Perlman remembers enjoying that aspect more than one would expect. For months she would come home with binders full of comics to read for homework. "Until I started working at Marvel, I didn't realize just how intricate the backstories of all the characters are," she says. "It's this feeling of discovering new worlds you didn't know about and getting sucked in."

Another problem was going from the realism of her earlier projects to what she calls the "elevated" science of superhero movies. "I value real science, so I find it hard to release my stranglehold on that," she says. "I go 'But how would one blow up the moon?' I want to know exactly how that would work! It was a little bit hard for me to step away from that initially." Even today, she's aware of the ways in which her desire for factual fidelity runs up against the demands of summer blockbuster movie-making.

Following the buzz surrounding Guardians, Perlman already has a number of projects lined up including a YA novel adapatation for DreamWorks, movies at Fox and Disney, and a project with Cirque du Soleil. Her background in both science and "big, funny, colorful wacky" science-fiction has allowed her to escape being pigeonholed.

"I think people are always trying to find where you 'fit in,'" Perlman says. "I've been allowed the opportunity to leapfrog from one genre to another because they all happen to share a lot of imagination, a lot of grounded characters, and a fantastical world."

In the long term, her dream is "to sell an original project that is expansive, that has a huge world and big concepts, but not pre-existing material," she says, but before she gets there, there's something almost as exciting to tackle: getting her Feynman screenplay turned into a movie. The movie just got re-optioned—"which is kind of amazing," she says, "considering the number of times it's been set up. It's been this thing that keeps coming back to life, and hopefully this'll be the time it actually gets made. "We'll see what happens.”