Enjoy this special Q&A to mark the release of Sebastian Faulks' latest novel, The Seventh Son.

How different would Seth’s life be if he was raised knowing he was the product of an experiment?

I suppose it would have posed very interesting questions of self-awareness. He’d have been asking himself how he was different from everyone else he met. He would have become very analytical, though whether he is temperamentally or genetically well suited for such self-examination is hard to say, because then you’d be looking at levels of synaptic activity, genetic and cultural influence that are not well understood. And in any case, it would vary from one individual to the next. But I suppose it would have been interesting to see which areas of thought or behaviour he thought might represent a difference. Though I have tried to do this anyway.

To put it more simply, I think the process of continually comparing himself with others would have made him anxious and unhappy.

How does the novel portray motherhood? What kind of mothers do Mary and Talissa represent? And how do their respective roles in Seth’s life change through the novel?

Neither is typical, though Mary manifests all the maternal features you might expect towards a child who is after all genetically hers. The fact that she is misled as to who the father is makes no difference to the way she feels. Many children in families that function well turn out to have different fathers and their mothers love them just the same, sometimes more!

Talissa is different. She sees herself first as an academic, a practical person and to some extent a feminist, someone drawn anyway to helping a sister in need. There is a suggestion that some maternal feeling has nevertheless been triggered when Kavya Gopal remarks how hard her heart is beating when she relinquishes all care of Seth: a suggestion that some of her modern practicality is down to bravado. The feelings she has for Seth later are not really maternal at all. They are meant to represent something more primal, a sort of genetic imperative. She sees him as if for the first time (and it is in fact only the third time). Something beyond her control or, as it turns out, understanding is triggered by the sight of him. As perhaps it was in our human ancestors on the Steppe.

What is your interpretation of the Parn institute and their approach to reproduction and the use of women’s bodies in the name of progress?

To my mind they represent a quite interesting conflict. Science has often progressed by taking a thick-skinned approach, for instance to animal experiments. There is a sort of human exceptionalism here. Anything done to increase our understanding of the great Homo sapiens is justifiable. It’s a slippery slope, of course, because at the foot of it Eugenics await.

However, there is some logic in their position. In WW1, Europe killed ten million men for no obvious gain or reason. So, what is the life of one person worth if they can make future life better for the rest of humanity? And anyway Seth has loving parents, is healthy and goes to a decent school, so…

I didn’t want to go too far into the mind of Parn and I very much wanted to keep him away from the stereotype of the geek tech billionaire. However, very successful people often share traits with sociopaths, namely a single-mindedness and inability to empathise. You see this in financiers too. I can bring down a bank, cause misery to millions, bet against my own country’s currency, cause a recession, but fill my already-bulging pockets. I am allowed to, so I will, is how they think.

Are there parallels between the world The Seventh Son portrays and our world today, and in particular our technological advancements?

The world depicted in The Seventh Son is very much like the world today. Not ‘parallel’ at all. It is meant to be real and grounded. By the end of the book we are about 30 years on from now, so it seemed reasonable to register some minor practical changes. But these are there for the fun of it, not because the book is science fiction.

These flourishes are not important. All the important stuff about genes and anthropology is already real.

What did you think about the ending and about what it represents?

Everyone who has read it seems to pick the same word: ‘inevitable’. When I began the final section in the Scottish highlands I didn’t know how it might end, but as I wrote the impetus all pointed to only one end. There is a small inherent criticism of sensationalist journalism, clickbait etc, but the bigger idea is that humanity, however we define that, is frightened of the unknown and will try to expel it. We have the capacity to understand and act against our baser nature, but the Caliban within is powerful.

To you, what does it mean to be human?

It means to belong to an ill-defined category whose borders are permanently shifting and whose definition is unclear. Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, defined orang-utans as human – in the genus Homo. The better part of Western thought over a long time has been devoted to defining humanity along inclusive lines to lessen prejudice and ensure equal rights. Biology and genetics support this work.

But the previous definition of us along lines of a species (viz. a group that can’t breed with another group) was broken by news that we are almost all part Neanderthal. Many attempts have been made to pick one defining species quality, including brain power, tool making, speech and culture. But it seems that in these we differ from other creatures only in degree, not in kind.

My own back of the envelope definition is that we are a human ape whose most distinctive quality, self-awareness or consciousness, is believed by most scientists to be an illusion, or what they call a ‘necessary fiction’.

So we are in fact defined by something illusory. No wonder we are also prey to Delusion, Illusion’s twin.