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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Top Ten Superhero Movies
May 15th, 2012
I’ve seen a bunch of these lists on the heels of the success of the Avengers movie. Forbes has their top twenty (which dips into some bad ones in my opinion). io9 has their top ten comic book movies, which is unfortunately not restricted to superheroes (comparisons are apples and oranges too often). IGN has a list. So does a lot other places. They all need updating and rethinking, in my opinion.
I used to be a fan of the old Superman movies (the first and second anyway), but they’re full of inexplicable dumb stuff, and spawned super stupid sequels. I mean, the time travel thing at the end of the first, without consequences, was a cop out. The bizarre special powers at the end of Superman 2 like the giant plastic “S” chest emblem. WTF?
Something similar with the Tim Burton Batman movies, for me, although more of a case of now seeing a Burton movie than a Batman movie, and failure to stand up to the Nolan version.
And the fact is the special effects are better today. The financial successes have led to more money and talent making superhero movies than ever before. So I give you:
1. Perhaps a little flavor of the month, but let’s put Avengers at the top and start there.
2. The Dark Knight.
3. Watchmen.
4. Spider-man 2.
5. X-Men 2.
6. X-Men: First Class.
7. Spider-man.
8. Iron Man.
9. Kick-Ass.
10. Hellboy.
I hope I will have to revise my list after the summer is over and we have new Batman and Spiderman movies.
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I suggest also putting the movie titles as text in posts like this (since there are sometimes technical issues with just embedded videos requiring one to go tediously cutting and pasting youtube links from the html source to find out what your list is – as I just experienced).
An apparently not so obvious (to me!) good idea!
I agree with your list, but I think that I might switch X-2 and First Class around. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed that film.
I stayed up late the other night, not intending to, in order to watch First Class again. It really was good, wasn’t it?! And I’m thinking I might move Watchmen up over Dark Knight, although both are great.