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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Alien Worlds
May 18th, 2008
I had excellent sushi for lunch/breakfast, then spent the day at the beach in Impanema sipping drinks from a coconut enjoying totally perfect weather here in Rio. Comparing this to mountain life in Wyoming, I can only conclude I’m no longer on the same planet. I am not sure I have ever seen a girl in a bikini in Wyoming, come to think of it.
And Wyoming and Rio really aren’t that different from each other compared to some parts of Earth (the Sahara, Grand Canyon, East St. Louis, or Beijing).
This is good to keep in mind when writing, or reading/watching bad sf like Star Wars. Dagobah is the swamp planet, Tatooine is the desert planet, and Hoth is the ice planet. Right. What then is Earth? The every planet?
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But isn’t Mars the dry, desert planet, Venus the hothouse planet, and Io the volcanic-hell moon?
I would put Earth as the crazy planet, or the water planet because 70% of the surface is water, no? True, it is likely that the planets mentioned above are most likely 100% their respective characteristic, but we don’t know that for certain. But I am by no means a star wars expert.
Now I have “Girl from Ipanema” stuck in my head. *sigh*
Please send shushi care package..er, nevermind, scratch that
–Eric N.
Not a bad point, Jonathan. The issue is a little more complex. My main point is that worlds — certainly living worlds I would hazard to guess — are large, diverse places poorly characterized in general by one feature. On the other hand, if the world is extreme by human standards, that extreme property will color our perception.
Mars certainly has huge mountains, incredible canyons, polar ice caps, and periods of calm and also periods of dust storms. The high temperatures are comparable to the low temperatures on Earth, and the low temperatures on Mars would shut down most military spec equipment.
And I think tomorrow night is going to be the high-end all you can eat seafood. I should run again tomorrow morning (today was better than Saturday, although the calves are still bothering me).
Dan Simmon’s included a “water planet,” Mare Infinitus, as one of the settings in Hyperion, which is on Mike’s sci-fi top 10 list. Whether the diverse ecology of Earth makes it an unusual or typical planet, we should enjoy it while we still can.
Just for the record, I did know that it was more complex than that.
I know you know that. But did you know that I knew that you knew?