Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN

A decade after the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the large Hadron Collider at CERN still leads the world in the search to uncover what the universe is made of, how it was formed, and what fate may lie in store for it. If there is such a thing as a cutting edge, it surely lies 100 metres below the Swiss-French border, at the point the beams collide. As part of a unique collaboration, this book pairs a team of award-winning authors with CERN physicists to explore some of the consequences of what the LHC is learning, through fiction. Authors include Sherlock and Dr. Who writer Steven Moffat, novelist and Small Axe screenwriter Courttia Newland, Dame Margaret Drabble and SF legends Ian Watson (whose credits include the screenplay for the Spielberg's A.I.) and Stephen Baxter (winner of the Philip K Dick and John W Campbell Memorial Award). Featuring CERN physicist and engineers: Professor Lyn Evans, Professor John Ellis, Dr. Andrea Bersani, Dr. Tessa Charles, Dr. Joey Huston, Dr. Michael Davis, Dr. Carole Weydert, Dr. Joe Haley, Dr. Kristin Lohwasser, Dr. Pete Dong, Dr. Daniel Cervenkov, Dr. Andrea Giammanco.

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, two collections of short stories (Multitudes, 2016, and Intimacies, forthcoming in May 2020), and is the editor of the anthology Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019). Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Imison Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the Irish Writers’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Award (Canada & Europe), among others. Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer, television producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the science fiction television series Doctor Who and the contemporary crime drama television series Sherlock, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In 2015, Moffat was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to drama. His plays include The Unfriend (2022). Luan Goldie was born in Glasgow but has lived in East London for most of her life. She is a primary school teacher, and formerly a business journalist. She is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2017 for her story 'Two Steak Bakes and Two Chelsea Buns.' Her short stories have also been long and short listed by Spread the Word and the Grazia/Women's Prize First Chapter competition. Nightingale Point is her debut novel. Lisa Luxx is a queer writer, performer, essayist, and activist of British Syrian heritage. Ian Watson wrote the screen story for Steven Spielberg’s film A.I. Artificial Intelligence—based on 10 months’ work with Stanley Kubrick—the popular Inquisition War trilogy and Space Marine for Games Workshop, and has produced a further 25 novels and 10 short story collections of SF, fantasy, and horror, as well as a book of poetry, The Lexicographer’s Love Song. Most recently he wrote, with Italian surrealist Roberto Quaglia, The Beloved of My Beloved (NewCon Press), a transgressive volume of tales. Stephen Baxter’s science fiction novels have won several awards including the John W Campbell Memorial Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Kurd Lasswitz Award and the Seiun Award (all for The Time Ships), as well as the Philip K Dick Award (for The Time Ships and Vacuum Diagrams). He has published over 100 SF short stories, several of which have won prizes, including three Analog Awards, two BSFA awards, and a Sidewise Award. His novel Voyage was dramatised by Audio Movies for BBC Radio and broadcast in 1999. Desiree Reynolds is a broadcaster, creative writing workshop facilitator, DJ, and mentor. She has had several short stories published in various publications, including A Generation Defining Itself, Hair: A Journey into the Afro and Asian Experience, Moss Side Stories, The Suitcase Book of Love Poems and Tangled Roots and Closure: Contempory Black Bitish Stories, published by Peepal Tree Press, 2015. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She had a very brief career as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, before taking to fiction. Her first novel, A Summer Birdcage, was published in 1963, and her nineteenth and most recent, The Dark FloodRises, in 2016. She also edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985, 2000). She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London and Somerset. Bidisha Mamata is a broadcaster, journalist, and film-maker. She specialises in human rights, social justice, and the arts and offers political analysis, arts critique, and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. She writes for the main UK broadsheets and broadcasts for BBC TV and radio, ITN, CNN, ViacomCBS and Sky News. Her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London, is based on her out