I write both, as you know, dozens of ecological and social scientific and historical works, dozens of novels. It's hard to describe a novel that grapples with the horrors of World War II as anything but grueling. But Codex Orféo is somehow...well, I hope, riveting for readers. Deeply provocative. Cinematic in a nearly surreal sense.

Non-violent ecological activism, scientific research and art are pillars of my experience. But I am also a story-teller. I merge science, and my passion for literature whenever possible if it helps me to wrestle demons, and to more effectively communicate what I believe to be most important to our lives.

When you ask about "mission" it is easy to reference a "mission statement" which, in my case, is the quest, however Quixotic, at times, to sensitize everyone I am in contact with to the miracle of life on Earth, and our sacred responsibilities to preserve, protect and revere biodiversity, at every possible juncture of our days and nights. We have very little time.

We often speak of "deep ecology," but this is also Deep Eco-Psychology: how the environment can remind us of, and help mend, mental and psychic wounds.

I find contemporary Holocausts against other species so unbearable as to make life itself a fundamental question mark. Are we a demonic, suicidal species? Can good conquer evil? And if so, when will that renaissance of virtue occur? This is truly "psychology today."

Any rational human being is horrified and existentially baffled by the reality of the Holocaust meted out by the Nazis, by the majority of Germans throughout the 1930s and World War II; and by the countless countries, communities and individuals who collaborated with the vast constellation of Hitler's monsters in the gruesome murder of well over 60% of European Jewry. Codex Orféo reminds us that the root of that insanity is continuing in the form of contemporary Holocausts against other species, with equally systematic, atrocious and inexplicable madness.

Poetry, song, stories, art, our reverence for nature, are key to our survival as a species, and to the survival of all species, I believe. You can't always extract such emphatic hunches and activist stances from a scientific maxim or mathematical axiom.