Well, in the simplest terms, my metaphysical message is this: if it so desires, humanity can transform itself into some 'thing' superior to humanity itself. If you want to call that thing 'God,' be my guest, though I rarely use that word. In any case, my message is both a compassionate and a shocking one - compassionate because I actually care about humanity, shocking because I express that care by encouraging us all to abandon our own humanity and become some 'thing' better. Thus, my message places less value on humanity as an end in itself, and more value on humanity as a means to an end. In this day and age, anyone who relates to humanity as a means or a 'tool' to achieve something higher is considered a little, let us say, cockeyed, a little eccentric, a little difficult to take seriously, perhaps even a little bit dangerous morally speaking. I accept that. I am a patient man.

I could tell you, yes, but I will not do so here. It would probably be a waste of time anyway. The fact is, if you read my philosophical works - Aiming Higher Than Civilization and Beyond Words & Machines - in tandem with my novels - Two Heads Equal Two Hands, Great & Mighty Things, The Spectacular Suicide - you will clearly see what my interpretation is of my own work. It's right there in front of you. Any comments here would not improve on that revelatory vision.

I don't think a reader necessarily should. However, the advantage of multiple readings over long periods of time is clear: the reader brings additional life experience to each subsequent reading, further enhancing his or her understanding of my message.

Without naming names, the few critics I believe you're referring to all work for established review publications in New York City. They are a small fraction of the large internet fan-base I enjoy across North America and Europe. In any case, those critics' 'hostility,' as you put it, is a good sign because it shows my work actually touches a nerve. Much of what I write frightens some critics who still think words like 'radical' and 'disruptive' are reserved for writers who apparently earn it - mind you, apparently - by hobnobbing with the East Coast literary and publishing crowd. Well, in fact, that crowd is better described as a bovine herd, and like any herd, its mentality is governed by survival habits, not by habits of growth and adventure. How can I be seriously bothered by the hostility of a dying breed of cows long since put out to pasture?

Well, of course, whether or not I agree would depend on whether or not they and I share the same understanding of the word 'religious'. I doubt we do. I'm not affiliated with any organized religion, never have been. Nor have I any grandiose, monomaniacal dreams of founding a new religion. Nonetheless, it is true that everything I write has a religious element in the broad sense that my writings reference realities 'beyond' or 'transcendent to' human reality on planet Earth. Except for the fact I don't mention things like spaceships, you might call what I write a form of science fiction, in the sense I'm considering alternate scenarios of existence, alternate moral realities, alternate social realities, alternate aesthetic realities.

How about not. My message is a metaphysical one, not a physical one, not a material one. I don't take planets and solar systems very seriously. Or, putting it positively, I take planets and solar systems about as seriously as a curtain I can simply part with the swipe of my hand, allowing me to 'see' what does exist through the window of reality. Extra-terrestrial life, as scientists typically define it, is just as much a figment of our highly limited belief systems as biological life. It's all one deception, one dream, one fiction of our five senses. If you read my books and understand them, you will no longer waste your time with speculating on life on other planets. Instead, you will look inside yourself and find out who you really are and where you really come from. To do that, you don't need telescopes or any other scientific instruments. You simply need to shut down your senses and still your mind.

Still more empirical garbage like rocks, dust, and alien races using monoliths of black stone to communicate pointless messages across pointless stretches of pointless outer space. There is no real growth in what you call 'the known universe.' There is only limiting perception supported by the limiting belief that empirical evidence is the final arbiter for everything forever and ever. If that's the world you want to live in, be my guest. But I grew beyond that realm of belief around my thirtieth birthday.