'I am not a scientist; I was a reasonable biology student, but I limped through chemistry at high school and eventually dropped it for politics. My school learning of science calcified when I chose to focus on arts at university, but when I conceived the premise of Fauna, I drew back the curtains on science for the sake of writing and became a student of the ‘intermezzo’: the in-between of science and fiction and the in-between of human and Neanderthal.' (Introduction)