The profound challenges of high-energy physics continue to attract some of the best minds. Its experimental successes have been triumphs of human ingenuity, its costs by and large tightly controlled, its discoveries a wonderful blend of the predicted and the wholly unexpected. Now it is on the threshold of a vast new landscape whose inhabitants, putative ‘supersymmetric’ partners of the known elementary particles, and their relationships can only dimly be perceived. Recent reported detections of oscillations between components of neutrinos and the imminent exploration of the predicted Higgs particles point to new phenomena to be explored over the next few years. A decade or more from now, the next lepton collider will be needed to define that supersymmetric landscape with the required precision. Unforeseen discoveries can also be expected.

Such progress costs substantial but fully defendable sums of money. But in the United States, the political climate is not propitious for expensive international science. Furthermore, it is proving difficult (see page 909) for the US high-energy physics community to achieve consensus about the best path forward. That is not surprising given the difficult technical trade-offs between different approaches, the disruption and demoralization that followed Congress's 1993 decision to abandon the Superconducting Super Collider, and the current budget squeeze on the discipline. The last factor is creating an environment of fear, in which researchers and laboratories may put a short-term desire to protect their projects ahead of the greater long-term requirement to rally around an agreed future programme.

Such a programme is required if the community is to make its case effectively. The perception that high-energy physics will be stuck in a holding pattern until the completion of the European Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has taken hold among some influential officials in Washington and, should it gain currency, it will result in more frozen budgets, staff cuts and division of the community. It is understandable that the Department of Energy has asked for a clearer consensus. But this should not be forced. A gathering of the community at Snowmass, Colorado, in summer 2001 is probably the best opportunity for it to coalesce. Congress and the administration should ensure that the current programme is adequately funded at least until then.