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.

There's an explosion of Indian fiction of all kinds, from military thrillers to chicklit. I think that's exciting.

But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.

Being in Harlem on the night of Barack Obama's election was extraordinary. It was the best street party I have ever gone to, and it felt like the period of American history which began with slavery had ended that evening.

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

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.

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