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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By “expert” I mean world-class, whether or not you’re super smart or super talented. I’m starting to lose my faith in innate “talent” after some recent reading. Two of the books are Talent is Overrated and Outliers. I’ve got another book on this topic coming, too, more on the inspirational side of things. Some of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>A few years ago I compiled a list of online astronomy resources for writers following that year’s Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers. Every year there are new links we pass around and discuss, so I wanted to do an addendum, if you will, adding more links to the ones I’ve previously posted (and which […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>Shelly Li is about the most talented teen I’ve ever known in my life, and I’m proud to call her a friend. She’s 17 and just sold her first novel and has been regularly selling science fiction to high-profile professional markets like the Futures section of Nature. I want to do two things here with […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »>This is a true story. It’s kind of funny, kind of stupid, but it’s true and that’s the important thing. I was a smart kid growing up, usually at the top of my class, always fiddling with one project or another. I was into the stars, dinosaurs, chemistry, science fiction, making movies, writing stories, chess, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>A few days ago I blogged about mainstream stories that I thought could be categorized as light versions of fantasy or science fiction. To qualify, the stories had to fail to reflect reality in some fundamental way without being obviously science fiction or fantasy. When that failure was over-the-top and great liberties are taken with […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>I was thinking about the movie 300, Nnedi Okorafor’a detractors, and this recent blog post and comments therein. Thoughtful people get upset by art, whether it is a book, movie, or just about anything. I think there are good reasons and bad reasons to get upset. A good reason is when you’re disappointed because something had […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>I have mixed feelings about the path Obama has chosen to take with NASA. I hate it when discussions develop along mindless political lines, like how some conservatives say that private industry is always better than the government (it is sometimes but not other times), how some liberals and libertarians think that the government has […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>Both science fiction fans and the general public complain about the failure of predictions of future technology. Where are the flying cars? Colonies on the moon? Jet packs? And food in pill form? Well, the last one is probably the least plausible of the above, and it could be argued that we have the other […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>Does Captain Kirk follow the Prime Directive — not to interfere with a developing alien species, or does he choose to do the right thing as he sees it? Does the team on Stargate: SG1 let the people on an alien world follow their own laws, or try to impose their own moral sensibilities upon […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Last night I caught the much discussed Discovery Channel episode of Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking dealing with aliens. The initial clip on the website is “Fear the Aliens” which is the controversial bit. Hawking, unlike Carl Sagan, apparently thinks that we would have much to fear from technologically advanced aliens and that we […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »>I’m teaching the last week of my astronomy class, and the last topic I’m covering is exoplanets: how we find them and their properties as we currently understand them. The textbook I’m using is brand new, Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson, and covers some aspects of this hot subtopic pretty well, but it […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>A friend of mine in Brazil is giving a public talk today. She was charged with talking about “Journeys Through the Universe” and asked me to come up with some videos she could use. I’ll embed the videos I suggested to her below, but I wanted to add one link first to a really nifty […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>