The Clarion Workshop at UCSD

Today’s New York Times asks that question in an article titled in my print edition, “Asking a Federal Judge to Save the Planet, and Maybe a Bit More “, and on their website, “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More“:

None of [today’s other news] will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

… Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

I know I’ve read sf novels with that as the premise.  My first question, of course, is whether the New York Times thinks losing the planet is “a bit” important or a “whole lot” important, and why their headline writer could come up with anything more descriptive than those two terms.  But on the same day that lawyers won a case returning copyright rights to the heirs of Superman’s creators, taking them back from corporate giant Time-Warner, anything is possible.

Another Universtiy of California connection to science fiction came up recently, when I learned that the UC Davis Special Collections Library has roughly “500 drawings, sketches, and photochemical reproductions (including photographs used as reference for sketches)” from the papers of sf illustrator Charles Schneeman.  The collection also includes “a small collection of correspondence from such science fiction authors as Isaac Asimov.”  He had a wonderful period style, as evidenced by the cover art for the Dec. 1938 and  June 1947 issues of Astounding Science Fiction and a drawing in the Gray Lensman’s series.

Schneeman’s daughter Barbara, donor of the works, became the first woman dean of agriculture in U.S. history in 1993, when she took the post at UC Davis.  She’s now an emeritus faculty member.