Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than eighty technical papers and ten books, including A New Science of Life. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where he was Director of Studies in cell biology, and was also a Research Fellow of the Royal Society.

From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for research on unexplained human abilities, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He is married, has two sons and lives in London.

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) was an American ethnobotanist, psychonaut and author noted for his knowledge of psychedelics, metaphysics and subjects ranging from shamanism to the origins of language and civilization.

His other books include Food of the Gods, The Archaic Revival and, with Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape.