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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Booklist Starred Review for Spider Star
April 27th, 2008
My first novel, Star Dragon, got a starred review from Booklist, which a lot of librarians use in purchasing decisions. I hadn’t seen their review for Spider Star until now. It’s also a very positive starred review:
The author of Star Dragon (2003) returns with another compelling work of hard sf, this time involving a human colony on the planet Argo and some terrifying human-alien contact. Although the Argonauts have been gone for some two million years, the technology they left behind has proved useful to later settlers. Then the team leader of a training mission on Argo’s larger moon inadvertently triggers an ancient but still functioning doomsday weapon that apparently was created for the Argonauts by another, even more advanced race of traders. If it isn’t deactivated, the weapon may well destroy Argo. Specialists in a wide variety of sciences embark on a desperate search for the advanced aliens’ main station, the Spider Star, which, according to the so-called Saga of the Spider Star, is neither star nor planet but “a real place, and its golden heart is the source of all good and evil.” The sciences and technics involved in the story run the gamut from astrophysics, astronomy, and meteorology to high-tech engineering, robotics, and astrobiology. Once again, Brotherton meticulously creates fully integrated, three-dimensional characters and complex interrelationships and rivalries, which with vivid depiction of the alien cultures as well as the planet Argo, the starship, and the Spider Star itself, make this a must-read for hard-core hard-sf fans. — Sally Estes
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