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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Great Mind-Meld I Missed: Scientific Accuracy in Stories
May 29th, 2008
Over at www.sfsignal.com here. Just plain missed it last week while I was traveling, which is dumb of me since sfsignal is one of the best sites to keep up with the science fiction world.
MIND MELD: Scientific Accuracy in Stories
Science fiction would be nothing without the science. Who doesn’t like reading about new or interesting ideas inside of a story? But should SF authors know their stuff when it comes to the science behind the stories? To that end, our question this week:
Q: Do science fiction authors have an obligation to be scientifically accurate with their stories? Is there a minimum level of accuracy an author should adhere to?
I like the answers by Alastair Reynolds, Alexis Glynn Latner, and Elizabeth Bear, although I don’t perfectly agree. Nancy Kress’s point is good one, too. I’ll be the hardass here. If you’re writing science fiction, know your science. This is no different from writers of historical fiction knowing thir history, or writers of any type doing enough research to know what they’re writing about. I don’t have any problem with people coming up with new, undiscovered science, or anything else, as long as it doesn’t violate what we already know about how the universe works. Then you’re just writing fantasy, which is fine, or being ignorant, which isn’t.
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It is my opinion that every writer should have a fair bit of general knowledge. Writing something set in a fantasy world, for instance, doesn’t automatically negate the laws of physics. And many science fiction writers could be served with some knowledge of history, especially from a world-building perspective. In other words, it’s never bad to know stuff, even when you don’t need to.
Any writer making a mistake in a story about how things are (science, history, etc.) risks shooting down a reader’s suspension of disbelief.