Hubbard set up the Church of Scientology in Hollywood in 1954 for a reason. He understood that celebrity was increasingly a feature of American public life, and celebrities themselves were going to be worshipped as minor deities were in the ancient world. The idea was: if you could get them, think how many people would follow.

Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free.

I get very antsy when I'm not occupied.

There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism.

To me the notion that Palestinians are actually Jews is, I think, quite revelatory and very radical and a possible bridge that has been ignored, I think, in this entire controversy and there's ample evidence to support it.

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny.

It's easy enough to predict that there will be conflict, but you place yourself in a maelstrom when you offer a view about the conflict, and I don't have an investment in one side or the other; I feel compassion for both sides. I've spent a fair amount of time in Gaza and Israel, done a lot of reporting and lived over there, and the tragedy is sometimes overwhelming. At the same time, America does have an investment in what happens.