There is one change Lindelof won’t be making from the book, though, and it’s one that may make detractors of his last show, “Lost,” tear their hair out in fury. In the novel, there are no answers to the Sudden Departure, as it’s called. It’s not even really the focus of the book, so much as the people of Mapleton — and beyond — who have been affected by a world with suddenly very different rules.

When the novel ends (a point the show will surely pass by season’s end), we know nothing more about the Sudden Departure than when we started. And it was those lack of answers that drew Lindelof to the show.

“In a lot of ways, it was sort of a relief, to plug into something that was overt in saying this show is about living with this mystery, and a lack of an explanation,” Lindelof noted. “My feeling was, I embraced that, I found it fascinating.”

Angry fans who think this may be just a case of going back to the island? Stay tuned, says Lindelof.

“There are probably people out there who will say, that’s wildly frustrating, I don’t want to subscribe to that,” Lindelof continued. “If they’re willing to watch the show and give it a chance, they’ll start to get interested in an entirely different set of things.

“The only thing to be interested in when you hear the idea is, where did those people go? Why them? Are they coming back? The more I read of the book, the less I cared, and hopefully the same will go of the show.”