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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Ten Science Fiction Movie Series that Sank
November 12th, 2008
The inspiration for this post constitutes our first two entries:
‘Alien vs. Predator’ was ‘a pity,’ says Ridley Scott
A pity, yes. What a pithy way of putting it.
Alien (1) was a tour-de-force of science fiction horror. Predator (2), although not as ground-breaking, was also an entertaining film with some originality and nice monster-building.
Later installments have been stale at best. Unimaginative. Sucky, in a bad way.
Star Wars (3) has to be a bigger disappointment, however. It was all downhill after the Ewoks. I prefer to think that the three prequels don’t even exist.
It seems that it is all about money. Milking the cow. Even if the cow is going dry, people will still buy a stinky package labeled “milk” and selling crap is easier sometimes than finding something new.
Almost anything that comes out gets repeated until it stinks. There are exceptions, like the latest Batman, however. When you get something better than the original, it is because someone has tried to reinvent the product, not to keep it the same. This is the lesson, I think. Every movie, book, or TV show should strive for something new, even if it is with old characters.
Star Trek (4) sank. Maybe the reboot will follow the lesson of Batman rather than Alien.
Back to the Future (5) went back to the well two times too many.
The Matrix (6) went from cool to “whoa” in the next two movies, but not in a good way.
The Terminator (7) was an awesome movie. T2 wasn’t bad at all, either. The third, not so great, and I hear there is a fourth now in the works.
The interesting Pitch Black (8) grew into the “Riddick Trilogy” that ultimately got pretty dumb, in my opinion.
Robocop (9) anyone? I didn’t even remember there was a third movie.
Finally, a great movie with really stinky sequels to end this list: Highlander (10). The other movies in the series should be erased from the collective consciousness of humankind, forever. There can be only one, right?
I thought about writing a list of movies that improved upon the originals, but could’t think of very many examples. And most of those were undone by bad sequels themselves (think Star Trek II and how it eventually spawned Star Trek V, proof that if there is a god, he is a foul and evil creature lurking in the director’s chair, for giving us that shitty movie — yeah, I’m talking about you, Shatner).
There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon in written sf series as well, which I will leave for a sequel to this post, if it is popular enough, and I don’t have any better ideas…
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I have to admit that Batman Returns was a lot better for me than previous incarnations. Haven’t seen the latest though. But I’m having trouble thinking of follow up movies that improve on the first. I did like Aliens II. And then there are all the remakes. Did we really need another version of Psycho?