Collision review: How CERN’s stellar secrets became sci-fi gold

Margaret Drabble, Luan Goldie, Steven Moffat and Stephen Baxter are among the top writers in Collision, an anthology that transmutes CERN’s elusive research into science fiction

physics

25 January 2023

by Boyd Tonkin

Inside CMS, one of the Large Hadron Collider’s key experiments, in 2017

Maximilien Brice/cern

collision

Edited by Rob Appleby and Connie Potter (Comma Press)

IN The Ogre, the Monk and the Maiden, Margaret Drabble’s ingenious story for the new sci-fi anthology Collision, a character called Jaz works on “the interface of language and quantum physics”. Jaz’s specialty is “the speaking of the inexpressible”. Science fiction authors have long grappled with translating cutting-edge research – much of it grounded in what Drabble calls “the Esperanto of Equations” – into everyday language and engaging plots.

Few…