“Within the mansion of serious fiction, no one will speak of how the continents were created; nor will they refer to the passage of thousands of years: connections and events on this scale appear not just unlikely but also absurd within the delimited horizon of a novel—”

Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement

So, for a biologist-writer, who reflexively looks to evolution each time she asks herself “why?”—is there a choice? Could I write a novel if my mind tends toward the “serious?”