Q. One of the narrative threads in the novel has to do with the centuries-old philosophical debate over reason versus faith, which you bring to life by having powerful jinn wreak havoc on the world, upending the laws of physics. Why was fantasy a good vehicle to illustrate these abstract ideas?

A. It connected in my mind to this idea I had about living in a world where the rules are breaking down, where the world is changing so fast in all directions that a lot of people have a sense of bewilderment. You don’t actually know what the rules are anymore, and you have a sense that maybe there are other people much younger than you who do know what the rules are, and are thereby make billions by inventing, what, Snapchat? What the hell is that? That, apparently, is worth billions. Novels are worth, if you’re lucky, a six-figure sum.

Q. Do you use Snapchat?

A. No. I know that it exists.

Q. You’re an outspoken atheist, but in your fiction, at least, you seem to have a soft spot for mythology and polytheistic religions.

A. Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

Q. Your novel is a homage of sorts to the myth of Scheherazade, who told stories every night to delay her execution, and the title is a riff on “One Thousand and One Nights.” It struck me that you have experienced the inverse of the Scheherazade story, after being a target for execution for your novel “The Satanic Verses.”

A. Yes, the anti-Scheherazade. My life is what it is, and clearly it affects what I think. Scheherazade is one of the great authorless figures. No one has any idea who made her up, so it’s easy to think she made herself up. But there she is, one of the immortal characters of literature, and how can you not fall in love with somebody who civilizes savage people by telling them stories?

Q. A few years ago, you were working on a science fiction series for Showtime. What happened to that?