People have invoked the ghost of Hemingway quite a few times in writing about the book. I could get into sticky territory here if I let myself go on about this subject. The more I hear it, the more it rankles, frankly.

Singularity is seen as an event horizon. There's everything that comes before it and everything that comes after it and never the twain shall meet, in much the same way that Judeo-Christian theology presents its notion of the afterlife - there's a very clear and impermeable demarcation there.

I don't know if it's something that we as a species are hardwired for or if it's more of a contemporary phenomenon related to technology and rapid dissemination of data. I did know that whatever its cause or nature, I wanted to interrogate this phenomenon. But the only way for me to do that, the only tool I have to dissect it with, is a fictional narrative.

I know well what faith really means to people in their daily lives, as there are many people in my family whose lives are permeated by their faith: it dictates the way they behave and sustains them in tough times, of which we've had too many lately.

On a micro level, if we're not terribly lucky, this sort of thing can happen to us quite frequently - the political becoming the personal in dramatic and irreparable ways. I remember the first time I went out into the desert, passing by all these mine fields and getting the history on them from my guide and realizing all these murderous mechanisms were real, were just sitting out there waiting for a victim, and some of them had been for sixty, seventy, eighty years.

Singularity theory is something that I do believe will come to pass, sooner or later, although whether or not in our lifetime I don't know, and I'm not sitting around waiting for my father to be resurrected. Readers probably have the impression from the book that I'm a lot more a of a techno kook than I actually am. It became a convenient fulcrum in the story, sort of a kaleidoscope through which to address religious and spiritual questions.

The urge to move is natural and understandable. As will be the case throughout your life, no matter how long or brief, the choice is, in the end, yours. Simply bear in mind that most every choice will have consequences, and in this instance those consequences would likely be quite grave.