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.

Sometimes we make assumptions about influence when similarities between two writers' work are so strong, but they're still just assumptions. Some things are sort of zeitgeist-y. There's a collective consciousness and we're all drawing from it.

Some people believe that everyone will experience judgment day. But it's my understanding that the Judgment Day or Rapture that I'm going to experience, as a nonbeliever, is not going to be the good part. That's the essential difference between the Singularity and what we're usually told about the fate of our eternal souls.

When you're a child - and my understanding of it is very basic - but when you're a very young child, the stimuli around you prompt your brain to form synapses. Once they're there, they're there, but if they don't form by a certain age, they're not going to.

Singularity will be an opt-in scenario for human beings, especially as we draw closer to it. The more that we have the opportunity to interface with and combine ourselves with machines and machinery and electronics - those will all be opt-in moments. Would you choose to have some sort of brain implant? Would you choose to have Google Glasses installed in your eyes? It's all an approach; it's all a glide path to the moment of genuine singularity; genuine artificial intelligence.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me apologetically "I don't read fiction," I wouldn't have to write fiction anymore. And I share that fascination with the truth. I'm not looking down my nose at it.

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.