“Like nowhere else”, was editor Connie Potter’s reply when asked what it’s like at CERN. She’s one of the 12,000 people from across the globe who work there at any one time. As an organiser of special projects and events at CERN, Potter’s enthusiasm for science outreach shone through as she described how hearing the passion of scientists around her at CERN lead her to co-create this book.
Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN is an anthology of thirteen short stories, each with a different author who was paired up with a CERN scientist. Two of these authors were on the panel for the Off the Shelf talk – Dame Margaret Drabble and Steven Moffat. Alongside the authors and editor were particle physicist Dr Kristin Lohwasser, and hosting the panel was presented and journalist, Spencer Kelly.
Kelly did a good job of keeping the conversation flowing, and after asking the panel their thoughts and impressions of CERN overall, moved on to asking the authors about their stories. Both authors were incredibly witty in their discussions of their writings; Dame Margaret took pleasure in how hers “successfully evades all issues with particle physics”, and described her short story as more fantasy than sci-fi. Titled The Ogre, the Monk, and the Maiden, her story follows a trio of CERN employees and is set in the 2050s as opposed to present day – a time where Drabble imagines we may have the ‘future circular collider’.
Dr Lohwasser gave a brief explanation of what the future circular collider aims to be – essentially higher energy collisions are needed to attempt to reach conditions closer to the big bang. She described two problems that need solving by researchers at CERN: the origin of antimatter asymmetry, and the elusive dark matter.
This leads us onto Moffat’s story Going dark. He read the first page or so, prefacing this with a warning not to expect the impression of his words through Peter Capaldi as we may be familiar with! The narrator of the story ominously begins with ‘By the time you read this, I will have ceased to exist’, and Moffat ends his reading with ‘By the time you are reading this you may never have existed either.’ The suspenseful and ominous description certainly left me wanting to read the rest of the tale.
Dr Lohwasser also gave a short description on the story she worked on, ‘Afterglow’, which follows the aftermath of a scientist investigating antimatter who inadvertently causes a nuclear disaster. However, she is keen to tell the audience about her afterword in which she explains how there’s little radiation at CERN, and that a disaster on that scale wouldn’t happen like that.
All collaborators on the panel expressed their enjoyment throughout the process of writing for the anthology, and Potter described how most stories in it include themes from CERN of the spirit of international cooperation and goodwill. Overall the passion of the speakers and the readings they gave certainly left me wanting to read the rest of their stories, and left me with an impression of how the arts and sciences can produce great works when brought together and collided, as the title suggests.
Rating: ★★★★★
Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN was published in February 2023. Other Off the Shelf Festival events can be found here
