Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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What good is basic research?
November 13th, 2007
There’s an easy answer to this question, and a better but more challenging answer.
The easy answer is that when you’re just poking around, you might discover something important. A number of very important discoveries have been made that could not have easily been anticipated. Plastics and penicillin are two major serendipitous discoveries.
My field, astronomy, is about as basic as it gets, with little likelihood of practical results. The most obvious practical result is the discovery of a near-Earth asteroid a long time before an impact. Less obvious practical results are things like algorithms to detect sources in an image that also apply to things like detecting tumors.
But even aside from these practical applications, astronomy, and other basic research is worth funding.
One of the things that makes human civilization great, in my opinion, is that we care about knowledge for its own sake. Existence isn’t only about food, shelter, and mating. There is an inherent value in determining the nature of the universe and our place in it.
I mean, how do you put a cost on determining the age of the universe? On the discovery of gravitational lensing? On determining the origin of gamma ray bursts?
We’re not just hear to make life easy, to make a profit, to advance a particular ideology. There’s value in basic research leading to fundamental truths. We’re not spending the house on such endeavors. We’re spending a steady small fraction of our money on these things. Certainly less money than we spend entertaining ourselves with frivolous diversions (which I too enjoy, very very much).
The same case can be made for art, humor, anything that we like to do that isn’t for immediate gain. Humans are thinking animals, and that thinking thing really should get us somewhere. We can figure things out. Some of those things will be useful, some won’t, but they’re all worth knowing.
I’m amazed at some of the things we’ve been able to figure out. It’s cool to be a scientist now.
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