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...
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"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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I just finished redecorating my student computer lab, replacing my old Demotivator posters from despair.com (great but have been up for 8+ years) with science fiction movie posters: It occurs to me I should have used the power of the internet to get some other ideas, although I like my choices. I’ve still got a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »>While I guess I always feel busy and sometimes overwhelmed, I’m usually getting more done than I think and it’s often worthwhile. I spent a lot of time running on Sunday (18 miles), and much of my time Friday and Saturday was spent with prospective graduate students. Most PhD programs make acceptances of graduate students […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Like me, you may have seen the commercials or trailers for the new movie Limitless coming out in a couple of weeks: It looks like a cool movie. I’ve always loved science fiction about increasing intelligence (e.g., the excellent “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes made into the pretty good movie Charley). However, like me, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>A friend sent me a link to an article at Physics Today about The Big Bang Theory. The premise of the article was to ask if the comedy could do more than make people laugh, and to propose it could educate them at the same time. Here is the lead: Could scientists help the cause […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>I wrote this entry as a guest post for the SFWA blog, and it is now available there. I’ll include it here as well below. For long-time and regular readers, you’ll see elements of previous posts. I’ve culled together ten things that I think are helpful resources (a few of these “things” actually include multiple […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>We’ve just had a major announcement concerning first results from NASA’s Kepler Mission. Before providing links to the details and reactions to the details, let me describe what the mission does and what it will continue to do. Kepler is basically just a big digital camera in space that takes pictures of a field of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>There was a recent short NYT article called “The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction” by Hugo-Award winning Paolo Bacigalupi that said: I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart. and …our children will inherit a world significantly depleted and damaged […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments »>I made some strategic errors in my career, mostly because I split my energy between engineering and astronomy double majoring when it would have been better to commit to one or the other early. By most measures, I’ve done fine, now being a tenured professor at the University of Wyoming, with a salary, research, and […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>When I was a kid, I collected rocks. One of the rock-related items I bought was a sheet of cardboard labeled Mohs Scale of Hardness. Talc is a one, while diamond is a ten. Tooth enamel is apparently a five. My card didn’t have a diamond on it when I bought it, but an encouraging […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments »>I’ve written about applying for jobs and given some tips about on-campus interviews. I wanted to give some brief advice about what to do when you actually get a tenure-track job offer. My advice will be pretty general, but with a few more specific things for science jobs like astronomy. First, celebrate. It’s hard to […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>In my second or third year of graduate school, I went through a period of depression of several months after realizing that the Ivory Tower was pretty dirty, even in a field of pure research like astronomy. I was starting to see how politics and power interfered with my ideal of how science, especially a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »>OK, I’ve already written two posts on this, an initial one with a lot of links and a follow-up after I’d gathered more information for myself. I’ve continued to read some documents, in particular several hundred pages of depositions. Maybe only several hundred…there are thousands there, and depositions are boring mostly. My opinions have evolved […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>