I think the challenge for humans remains the same as it has always been: to learn the skills of kindness, compassion, and love. Without these sacred skills, all technology can do is grow the shadows in our lives.

I really admire the experimentalists who challenge traditional narrative - writers like Ishmael Reed, Michael Martone, Donald Barthelme, Tatyana Tolstaya, George Saunders, and many others.

I set many of my stories in a gritty "realist" world, but one that is plagued by an overuse of technology, which is akin to the world we find ourselves living in now.

That particular story ["The Pyramid and the Ass"] was written during the dark days of the Bush years. George W. Bush had just been "re-elected" (or elected for the first time, depending on how you count the stolen election) and it seemed like the horror of his presidency would last forever.

Parents are already telling their kids about falling in love online - there's nothing "frightening" or "dystopian" about this. So, the critique doesn't work, because we already consider our dystopic state of affairs normal.

In Nepal, I realized a certain part of my spiritual search had come to an end. I wasn't ever going to live in a Himalayan cave (I like electricity and a soft bed way too much), and I sure wasn't going to find enlightenment so easily.

I realize that I've had a very idyllic vision of what spirituality looks like. Honestly, most of Western culture has an idyllic and simplified idea of what enlightenment entails.