I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.

Intellectuals who live in Hungary, or who wish to work or lecture there, are extremely circumspect in their criticism.

These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.

In good novelistic fashion, the discovery I’ve made is that it’s complicated. I think that’s one of good things about exploring these questions in a non-polemic, fictional way: you get to feel out territory rather than take positions. Through writing this, I can understand the impulse to faith, how people make meaning, how people make community, without having to say, do this, don’t do that, or I believe, I don’t believe.

In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.

Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.