Quotes from the glossy reports produced by the Lab come from Siting the Superconducting Super Collider in Illinois: A Report to Governor James R. Thompson and members of the 84th General Assembly, 1985 and from To the Heart of Matter: The Superconducting Super Collider, 1985 and 1987, Universities Research Association.
The title of chapter fourteen comes from a letter from W. E. Gladstone to Roderick Murchison regarding Lady Florence Baker.
In preparing the chapters on the letters to the editor and the public hearing, I drew heavily on the Environmental Impact Statement and the records of the public hearings held in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement in Illinois in October 1988, in some cases reproducing bits of text verbatim. Much of the text of the public hearing comes from direct quotes from transcripts of the Superconducting Super Collider hearing held in October 1988 at Waubonsie Valley High School. Names and descriptions of the speakers in the hearing are fictional.
The quote from chapter twenty-two: “Very big projects don’t always have happy histories,” is from a personal interview with John Peoples, former director of Fermilab, 2010. The quote from the same chapter: “Now I’m going to have to wait until I’m fifty to understand what breaks electroweak symmetry,” comes from a personal interview with Andreas Kronfeld, Fermilab, 2010.
About Fermilab, the Inspiration for the National Accelerator Research Lab
Much like the novel’s National Accelerator Research Lab, Fermilab is a particle physics laboratory located in the Chicago suburbs. The lab focuses on research into one of the most enduring mysteries of science: what is our universe made of and how did it come to exist? Named after renowned Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, Fermilab houses the Tevatron, which ceased operation in 2011 but was for a time the world’s highest energy proton-antiproton collider. Its technology has since been outpaced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland, where scientists recently confirmed discovery of the Higgs boson and a new class of particle called pentaquarks. CERN has also been the subject of numerous conspiracies and much speculation about the creation of black holes, time travel, etc.
The story of the founding of Fermilab is fascinating. The campus is located on land that was once the town of Weston, Illinois, a town that no longer exists. Weston was annexed in the 1960s to allow for the construction of the Fermilab campus. As in the novel, many of the former town’s homes are still in use today as offices and to house visiting scientists and their families.
When Fermilab arrived, the area was still very much a small, rural community. Suddenly, this small farming community found itself home to a number of internationally renowned scientists. Over the years, this, as well as other forces and changing land-use patterns, have been at the root of the area’s transformation into a busy suburban community. For more information about the founding of Fermilab, I recommend Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience, which was invaluable to me in my research.
In the late 1980s, Fermilab was one of the sites under consideration to house the proposed Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), a project eventually begun in Waxahachie, Texas. Today, Fermilab is still considered by many to be the premier laboratory for particle physics in the United States. In recent years, Fermilab scientists have focused on experiments on dark matter, dark energy, and some really interesting projects, including an experiment called MINOS in which beams of neutrinos were sent underground all the way from Batavia, Illinois, to the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota to help provide scientists with a better understanding of neutrino oscillations.
About the Superconducting Super Collider
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was a real project under consideration at a number of locations around the United States. Scientists believed the collider would help them understand more about the matter that makes up the universe, and as such, would help them understand the circumstances under which the universe came to exist.
For many years, the United States stood at the forefront of physics research, and many proponents of the SSC believed its construction would help the United States retain that position. But this was the era of Chernobyl, of Three Mile Island; mistrust of the government was strong, and questions about the safety of scientific facilities were on the minds of many citizens.
Much like in the novel, physicists hoped the SSC would help to prove or disprove many of the theories about particle physics that were under consideration at the time. In the 1980s, the Department of Energy began the process of searching for an appropriate location for the collider. One of the locations under consideration was Fermilab and the surrounding communities. At the end of a long process that included environmental impact studies and public hearings, Waxahachie, Texas, was selected as the site of the future SSC.
Construction of the SSC began in 1991, but by 1993, with increasing costs, the U.S. government pulled the funding, having already spent $2 billion on the project. The Waxahachie location, where construction had already begun on tunnels and buildings, was abandoned. For many years, the partially completed site of the SSC stood empty, vandalized and filling with rainwater. (You can find some really interesting photographs of the abandoned site taken by urban explorers.) Recently, though, the site has been acquired by a company that uses it as a chemical blending facility and that has, in an interesting twist, preserved the initialism SSC, which now stands for the “Specialty Services Complex.”
Had it been completed, the SSC would have been the most powerful accelerator ever constructed, three times as powerful as the LHC, currently the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider. Many scientists believe that had the SSC project gone forward as planned, discoveries such as the Higgs boson (frequently referred to as the “God particle”) would have happened earlier and would have been made in the United States.
The story of the SSC has much to say about American attitudes toward science and the challenges scientists and science writers face when communicating such complex research to lay audiences.
About the Academy
The Academy is based on the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA), a residential high school for gifted and talented students founded in 1985. Leon Lederman, Nobel prize–winning physicist and director of Fermilab at the time, was one of IMSA’s founders.
Acknowledgments
Love and gratitude to my partner in crime, Brook Miller, for his support, encouragement, time, feedback, and pep talks along the way.
A thousand thank-yous to agent extraordinaire Eleanor Jackson for fiercely believing in this book, for working tirelessly to find it a good home, and whose suggestions at every step made it better.
To the good people of Dzanc, for bringing this book into the world, especially Michelle Dotter and Mary Gillis, for their wise, careful edits; Guy Intoci for his impressive schedule juggling and oversight of the whole shebang; Steven Seighman for his design expertise and patience; Gina Frangello, Rhonda Hughes, Meaghan Corwin, and the entire Dzanc publicity team for all of their hard work and enthusiasm.
To Sheryl Johnston—wise, reassuring, and incredibly hardworking guide through the process of getting this book into the hands of readers.
To Adam McOmber and Christine Sneed, my writer support system, for years of encouragement, guidance, and understanding.
To the many early readers who participated in the Feedback and Serialization Project, especially Holly Witt, Katy Sirovatka, Nancy Barbour, Tom Noel, LeAnn Deane (also for her mad librarian skills!), Karen Cusey, Lindsey Fierros, Julie Eckerle, Ann DuHamel, Linda Kolaya, Helen Bergman, Vicki Wilmer, Katie Beach, Carter Beach, Pete Wyckoff, Sara Harding Lou, Aaron King, P.B. Carden, and Kevin Fenton. Forgive me if I’ve inadvertently left anyone off this long list.
To Gail Kearns for the name “Yankee Noodle Dandy.” To Wendy Gross for letting me observe and take notes during her Mary Kay event. To Pallavi Dixit for her help with Sarala’s mother’s recipes. To Jennifer Bridge for her living-history facility expertise. To the Anderson Center, where I wro
te the first chapter, and fellow resident Kora Manheimer, who came up with the name “Heritage Village.” To the good people of Fermilab, especially Adrienne Kolb, John Peoples, and Andreas Kronfeld.
To the Jerome Foundation for funding to support research. To the Lake Region Arts Council and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund for writing time.
To Jennifer Goodnough, Troy Goodnough, and Jennifer Rothchild for helping me survive the weekend of the great book emergency.
To my family and friends for cheering me on and celebrating each small step along the way.
And with love, always, for P and E.
Discussion Questions
1. What do the chapter titles and the epigraphs at the start of many of the chapters suggest to you about the ideas at work in the book?
2. What is your initial response to the Winchesters’ unconventional family arrangement? What does Rose see as the connection between their arrangement and her certainty that hers and Randolph’s will be “one of the world’s great love stories”?
3. Early in the novel, Sarala reflects on Abhijat’s ambitions, noting that “each time he achieved one of the many goals he set for himself, he responded not with celebration and satisfaction at his own accomplishment, but by thinking, Yes, but there is more to be done.” In what ways might Abhijat’s attitude be useful? In what ways might it be detrimental?
4. Books are important to many of the novel’s characters—for Randolph and Meena it’s The Secret Museum of Mankind; for Lily and Meena it’s their love of encyclopedias; for Sarala, her self-improvement books. In what ways do these books reveal interesting or important information about each of the characters? Which books have been important to you as a reader in this way?
5. Early on in the novel, Abhijat notes that curiosity is the most important human quality. In what ways is curiosity important to each of the characters?
6. The novel explores the ways in which land use in Nicolet changes—from prairie to farmland to suburb—with the arrival of the Lab. How does this history of changing land use and the arrival of the Lab affect the community?
7. How do you respond to Abhijat’s mother’s advice that “one could best find success by first finding peace and contentment”?
8. Lily argues that “sometimes letters are a better way to know someone than all of the silly, inconsequential interactions of daily life.” Why do you think she feels this way? Do you agree?
9. If you were a resident of Nicolet, where do you think you’d come down on the issue of the Superconducting Super Collider?
10. Where in the book do you encounter characters struggling to communicate successfully? How does this manifest? Is this resolved? If so, how? If not, why?
11. How does the use of physical space in each of the homes convey ideas about the characters? For example, are there rooms that seem to “belong” to certain characters? What do these rooms say about their owners? Are there ways in which these spaces reveal something about the social structures in each of the families?
12. The idea of feeling “at home” is a central focus of the book. Where do each of the characters feel most at home? Why?
13. Do you think Sarala ever really considers leaving Abhijat? If not, why? If so, what do you think changes her mind?
14. In what ways are the two families different at the end of the book than when we meet them at the beginning?
15. What are each of the characters most hoping for throughout the novel? Which of them get what they’re hoping for? How do these outcomes affect each of the characters? Do you agree with Randolph’s opinion at the end of the book that “it can be liberating to let go of hopes that chain one to unhappiness, dissatisfaction”?
16. What do you find likeable about each of the characters? What do you find unlikeable about them?
17. What do you imagine the future has in store for each of these characters?
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