'We hope everyone who has landed on our pages over the past month has enjoyed our focus on women and science, and we welcome you to our next issue on Extinction. We initially shaped this theme around three novels released earlier this year – James Bradley’s Ghost Species Donna Mazza’s Fauna and Chris Flynn’s Mammoth (the subject of a conversation with Jess White to be uploaded next week) – which focus on de/extinction, whether through genetic engineering or voices from the past. These novels aren’t unusual in a country which has the highest rate of vertebrate mammal extinction in the world; what is interesting is that they have emerged in a year which has seen significant disruption to humans’ ecosystems. Perhaps fiction and Covid-19 might engender some empathy for the ways in which our fellow living creatures experience the devastating impact of humans.' (Introduction)