GENE GENIE IS OUT
Humans can already engineer genes to create new novel life forms, but the future promises much, much more radical departures from what we now know as normal
IWORDS LEANNE EDMISTONE
n a world where genetic research is improving food sources, curing disease and closing in on technology to resurrect extinct species, the power of Donna Mazza’s novel Fauna is not just its plausibility but growing probability.
Set barely two decades into the future, with a de-extinction exhibit travelling the world showcasing the wonder of live dodos, thylacines and woolly mammoths in their ancient Pleistocene habit, Stacey and Isak join a secretive, experimental IVF program in the hopes of having a third, much-desired child.
The struggling Australian couple is richly compensated for allowing their embryo to be blended with edited cells from the Neanderthal race, which lived across Europe and Asia more than 100,000 years ago.
Stacey and Isak have no idea how different their daughter will be, what her life will be like or whether there will be lasting effects on their other two children and the family as a whole.
An avid reader of National Geographic, Mazza admits to mixed emotions when describing her attitude to genetic research.
“There is exciting potential as far as [human] health and wellbeing goes. We could resolve all sorts of terrible diseases with genetic research but, by the same token, there’s also the potential we could do some pretty crazy stuff,” says Mazza, 52, an academic at Western Australia’s Edith Cowan University, who lives near Bunbury in the state’s south with her partner, Graham, and their daughters Allegra, 19, and Florinda, 13.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to resist it. It’s such a tantalising idea for us as humans, to bring back these extinct species.
“They’ve already matched the genome for the thylacine for example; once the technology is there, do you really think they won’t try to bring it back?
“When it comes to humans, most of the time with medical research, people do find a rationale for it.’’
Drawn from Mazza’s award-winning short story The Exhibit, published in the Westerly Magazine in 2015, Fauna is far more than an examination of scientific potential and its consequences.
This is a rich and beautifully written exploration of primal maternal instinct, motherhood and how much a woman will sacrifice to keep her children safe.
“I’d been reading and researching for about three years, but the [first draft] only took about four months to write. It came to me in a bit of a rush, and it was quite an exciting writing experience,’’ she said. “Stacey’s voice just needed to be told.”
Mazza laughs. “Some days I would be in such a state of empathy with the character, that when I was writing the scenes going through childbirth, I actually had contractions and had to put a hot water bottle on my stomach. The breastfeeding stuff too, I was able to cast myself back, draw on that experience. It was a very visceral thing.”
Just as readers demanded to know “what happens?” after reading The Exhibit, so too the engrossing experience that is Fauna ends too soon.
A laughing Mazza is coy when asked about a sequel. Watch this space.
Fauna, Donna Mazza, Allen & Unwin, $29.99