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
My mother is reading Spider Star and liking it significantly more than Star Dragon, primarily because she feels more for the characters. She hasn’t finished the book yet, but did tell me on the phone the other day that she’d noticed an error. Not a typo, but an outright mistake.
She claimed I’d gotten the temperature sequence of the colors of the rainbow incorrect. The mnemonic “ROY G BIV” describes the sequence, running from red through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
She was wrong, but it was a reminder for me about communicating science that is second nature to me and how easy it is to forget the general audience. Let’s talk about the specific instance in Spider Star. It’s in regard to the color of stars, and their temperatures, as they evolve. Hotter stars are bluer, while cooler stars are redder.
To most people, red is a warm color, while blue is a cool color. Warm stoves glow red, after all, and icy things and cool water look blue or bluish. Artists think this way, very much, as do those in fashion and decorating. But this is completely backwards to an astrophysicist.
Blue photons have higher frequencies and energies than red photons. When you heat a dense gas, as in the atmosphere of a star, it does warm up and glow red. If you continue to increase the temperature, the gas will put off a higher fraction of higher energy photons. At some point it will be “white hot” when it’s emitting a lot of visible light at all wavelengths (remember color wheels and how mixing all the colors gives you white). Continuing to heat the gas will give you a blue tint.
An aside: these points also explain why there are no green stars. When you heat something to a temperature such that the peak photon energies correspond to green light, intermediate between red and blue energies, there is enough light at all visible wavelengths that the star will appear white. With good eyes/telescopes, you can see stars in the sky that appear red, white, and blue, but never green.
The technical term for how hot dense gases, solids, and liquids radiate as a function of temperature is blackbody radiation, although I always hated the term because radiating objects sure don’t look black, do they? Anyway, the wiki link just above goes into more detail for those interested, plotting actual spectra.
Writers have to have thick skins to reach success. Rejection and criticism are a daily experience, even after being professionally published. On a good day, it isn’t a big deal. On a bad day, it’s depressing.
One of the reasons that some writers achieve success is because there are things to be learned from the criticism. One person saying something isn’t often useful, as any given person can be a sloppy reader, or just an annoying sourpuss more generally. Seeing something repeated by several people, easier to do with a lot of feedback, is something to pay attention to.
One of the things I’ve seen in reviews of Spider Star is confusion over a few things that I think ought to be obvious, and that I thought I made obvious, but apparently aren’t. The Specialists who trigger the doomsday weapon, for instance, have been described as “archaeologists” several times when they intentionally back off their initial discovery to make way for the archaeologists. I’ve seen a couple of other comments that make it clear that similar plot points weren’t well appreciated. Subtlety doesn’t work for a lot of readers, or at least some fraction who read quickly, and I need to rethink my presentation, especially for things that happen offstage. One paragraph buried in inner monologue isn’t the place to bury a key bit of information.
I was thinking about this in part because of the New York Times article I blogged about earlier this week, which discussed some changes at the Sci Fi Channel to reach larger audiences. “Generally speaking, the feeling within the science fiction community is that a lot of the shows on the Sci Fi Channel are watered-down versions of the real thing,†said Michael Capobianco, the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Mr. Capobianco said the success of science fiction on television and at the movies has not been matched by similar success for writers.
“One of the things we’ve discussed is, ‘Should our books resemble the media works that are out there?’ †he said. “Should they be dumbed down or watered down to appeal to a wider audience?â€
So, I don’t really plan to dumb down my writing, but I do plan to work much harder on clarity and the word count and presentation given to key plot elements. I don’t think Harry Potter is especially watered down. Rowling has complex plots, and she does a really good job reviewing necessary information to make sure everything is clear without making readers (at least me) feel like she’s belaboring a lot of old stuff. I can aspire to do better myself.
I had excellent sushi for lunch/breakfast, then spent the day at the beach in Impanema sipping drinks from a coconut enjoying totally perfect weather here in Rio. Comparing this to mountain life in Wyoming, I can only conclude I’m no longer on the same planet. I am not sure I have ever seen a girl in a bikini in Wyoming, come to think of it.
And Wyoming and Rio really aren’t that different from each other compared to some parts of Earth (the Sahara, Grand Canyon, East St. Louis, or Beijing).
This is good to keep in mind when writing, or reading/watching bad sf like Star Wars. Dagobah is the swamp planet, Tatooine is the desert planet, and Hoth is the ice planet. Right. What then is Earth? The every planet?
The Hubble Space Telescope Proposal Review: Part 2
May 15th, 2008
I wanted to talk about what the experience feels like while it’s fresh.
There were nine of us sitting for 2.5 days in a board room at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), with a panel chair, plus two support staff from the institute to help with technical issues/questions. We also had various observers come in from time to time, from the Institute or from the higher-level allocation committee.
In the old days, we did everything on paper. Now, the proposals are distributed on DVD and everyone sits there with their laptops and some papers. We have projection systems that allow each proposal discussed to be seen by everyone and for us to check out the figures together. Our rankings and comments on individual proposals are all entered into Institute software.
It’s a tough business, this reviewing. We triage to fit the schedule. The bottom 1/3 of proposals, based on preliminary rankings, are not even discussed. Experiments the Institute showed that only a tiny, tiny fraction of proposals with such low preliminary rankings ever rose to the top after full discussion and new ratings.
We discuss proposals in whatever order the chair selects, starting with an introduction and statement of strengths and weaknesses by pre-assigned primary and secondary reviewers. After a brief discussion (5-15 minutes) we vote on paper slips with a score between 1 and 5. At the end this process a couple of days later, we see where everything comes out and make final adjustments. Sometimes science is overlapping, and we only want to support one of two competing proposals. Sometimes we prefer to give time to one large program at the border of our orbit limit rather than several smaller requests. Sometimes vice versa. We also have to see where the snapshot and archival/theory proposals come out — generally speaking, they need to match the science level of the guest observer requests receiving time.
We stick to rating the science, primarily, with some consideration of the quality and productivity of the proposing teams.
Every panel has its own particular chemistry. This panel had pretty good chemistry. People got along, were respectful, and didn’t feel the need to hear themselves talk (too much — and I’m as guilty as anyone that way). I’ve only been on a few panels over the years where things got testy. It’s a democratic and professional process though — at the end of the discussion everyone votes and moves on.
One interesting thing that always happens is that while there’s a lot of general agreement about the strengths and weaknesses of a given proposal, there are always a handful that individual experts can torpedo or rocket to the top. Our panel contained proposals on active galaxies, cosmology, and just a few on gamma ray bursts, so no one was an expert on all of these. The experts bring in the specialized knowledge, and catch the proposers on problem points, and educate all of this. I had 1-2 proposals I shot down, 1-2 I raised up, and most reviewers had at least one proposal for which they really swung opinion one way or another. Frankly, we could have used a little more expertise, too, but nine reviewers is a lot already. (There were about 100 of us total across all the panels.)
At times I think ego is involved, but no one goes on ego that long. It’s really about focusing on what science Hubble should do. If we make mistakes, Hubble does the wrong programs. I can really think about why I am in astronomy, and be an advocate for what I think should be done with the telescope.
It’s a lot of work, with so much preparation, and then travel and intense discussion. But it’s so educational, and so much plain fun.
The Hubble Space Telescope Proposal Review: Part 1
May 14th, 2008
I have a little time before I have to catch a taxi to the airport, and I will get some things down while they are fresh.
First, my primary reason to do this review this year was that the proposals were for a post-repair mission refurbished and repaired Hubble Space Telescope. This involves repairing not one, but two failed instruments (the Advanced Camera for Surveys AKA ACS, and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph AKA STIS). Also, two powerful new instruments will be installed (Wide Field Camera 3 AKA WFC3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph AKA COS). With a full suite of instruments for the first time in years, some of them providing significantly enhanced capabilities (in some modes, COS is an order of magnitude more powerful than any previous spectrograph on Hubble), the proposed science was sure to be exciting.
And it was. And I can’t be very specific at all about it, as the proposals and the information contained within them is proprietary, scientifically classified if you will. This is to protect the scientists and the institute all around. Although it is rare, ideas are stolen. More practically, it’s pretty shitty to hear people discussing your proposal through anything but official channels. One worst case scenario is hearing news that your proposal is definitely getting time, and then having that fall through (sometime there are constraints that aren’t clear on first review, or conflicts that need to be resolved at a higher level).
Some statistics. 3500 orbits are available for guest observer programs. About 2000 are given out by a dozen panels, including mine (5 stellar, 5 extragalactic, and 2 planetary). There are an additional 400 orbits to subsidize larger proposals granted time by the panels. There are about 1100 orbits reserved for Large/Treasury programs that are reviewed by a higher level telescope allocation committee (TAC). The TAC can rebalance these allocations to improve the science program as they see it.
The oversubscription rate was about 6 to 1 this cycle (17). That means about 85% of the proposals fail to be awarded time. It’s competitive business.
There are also some 1000 snapshot opportunities to fill in orbits between longer observations and make more efficient use of the telescope. Oversubscription rate for these this cycle was about 4 to 1.
There is some $3 million dollars in analysis money for archival projects or theoretical projects that support Hubble science.
The servicing mission is likely to occur in early to mid-October 2008 (getting through what is usually the worst of hurrican season). Two shuttles are required, as Hubble is in a very different orbit than the space station and a rescue must be possible if the shuttle is damaged on liftoff.
OK, that’s all for now. Some more personal thoughts about the experience later.
2001: A Space Odyssey. I agree. Tops my list, too.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a good movie, but it doesn’t “get the science right.” We know very little about how to manipulate memories this specifically, and with it being set in the present, it was very implausible. I think the best that could be said for the science is that it’s so vague in this film that it isn’t obviously impossible.
Alien. Another good movie, and one on my original list. I removed it on my revised list, however. It wasn’t at all clear that they’d avoided FTL travel, even though travel times were long and suspended animation was used. Also, doesn’t the alien explode in space? That’s unlikely, among some other biological issues.
Gattaca. Another fine film. I like it very much. The physical science was absent or stupid (that was astronaut training?!), however, so it didn’t make my list. The biological science was much better, although I was skeptical about some details.
Solaris. I’ve heard good things about both versions, and the original Lem story, but I confess I’ve never watched or read any of them. I want to, at some point. I do object to New Scientist pulling a fast one here. “This Russian classic makes the list not so much for the specific science it portrays, as for its portrayal of the limits of science and of human understanding.” What??? That’s getting the science right? This movie represents 20% of the entries.
I want to talk a little bit about the dark side of academic sociology, a dark side that does have a silver lining. This situation I will describe may be obvious to some of you reading, and a complete surprise to others. For those to whom it’s obvious, perhaps I’ll still have some subtle insights that make this post worth the time.
When I’m not being general, I’ll refer to my own field of astronomy which represents a perfect case study.
In a zero growth situation, every professor in a graduate program needs only to train one student during their career to replace them when they retire. Every University with graduate programs expect professors to get funding to support themselves and their graduate students, and wants to see as many PhDs awarded as possible. The average professor trains way more than one graduate student during their career. I currently have three graduate students, and expect to have four in the near future. Getting half a dozen through to PhDs during my career is not unlikely.
Are you starting to glimpse the problem?
I recall seeing a paper maybe some ten years ago that suggested that about half of all astronomy PhD recipients managed to stay in astronomy one way or another, and that this number hadn’t changed much over the past few decades. Well, there was a lot of growth in astronomy programs in the 1960s and 1970s, and the establishment of places like the Space Telescope Science Institute in the 1980s continued growth. The 1990s saw the first real job crunch that I’m aware of, with highly qualified people — award-winning young scientists — failing to land jobs, or at least ones they thought to be acceptable in comparison with their expectations. And that’s continuing and becoming tougher at least in quality of positions.
There’s also resistance to recognizing the situation on the faculty side. Some of us, especially the older professors at the more prestigious places, don’t want to consider this a problem. I’ve heard first or second-hand some big name astronomers you may have seen on TV documentaries flat out ridicule the idea of graduate programs providing guidance toward non-traditional jobs, or, in another case, idly muse about how graduates of Princeton, Caltech, and Harvard seem to be the only ones getting jobs at Princeton, Caltech, and Harvard. (More on this point in a moment.)
The situation now is worse. It’s relatively easy these days to follow the professional astronomy job market. There’s a wiki page all about it. With a couple of post-docs seeking permanent positions, I’ve been paying attention. Think about how each Princeton, Caltech, or Harvard professor may produce a handful of PhDs, and about how only one of them gets to be the replacement. The others can get jobs at places down a rung or two on the ladder, which displaces all of those University’s graduates down another few rungs. You finally end up with graduates from the top Universities, top-notch researchers, taking jobs at places you’ve never heard of, often teaching-intensive departments in which research time and support is limited. I don’t want to knock teaching — it’s important and a lot of astronomers enjoy it immensely (I do) — but spending more time writing multiple choice tests for non-major students than doing original research is not what most Princeton graduates signed on for originally.
This can and does have a significant effect on morale among astronomers at all levels. The academic system has set up a Ponzi scheme of sorts that, at least in astronomy, seems to be threatening to collapse. Okay, maybe collapse is too strong a term, but it’s going to shake up things in a profound manner.
What’s the silver lining? Well, lower-rung Universities can now attract much better talent. The difference in quality of faculty between the top departments and the lower-ranked departments is narrowing. The top departments are still likely to give their faculty more time for research, better facilities, and better support in general, but really good people are spread throughout the system teaching undergrads and graduate students both.
Maybe some people will reading this will be rolling their eyes, having seen similar issues years ago in the humanities, or any academic field that didn’t experience the growth of science and has few positions for PhD holders outside of academia. Well, it’s part of my professional landscape on a regular basis and I’m talking about it now.
I advise a lot of students. Is it ethical for me to push any but the most exceptional students toward advanced degrees in astronomy?
I think it is, but in much more limited terms than in the past. If you love astronomy, or any field, pursuing it at the highest levels can’t be a bad way to spend a few years. Moreover, there are a lot of ways to be successful in a field and it isn’t only the people with the highest GPAs and GRE scores that turn out to be the best scientists. I mean, it helps, but there are a lot of other important qualities, and many of them are not well measured by grad school applications.
And departments like my own at the University of Wyoming? In order to best prepare our students, we really need to specialize a bit and make sure our students are among the best in some respect and can compete. For instance, I think our niche is going to be to turn out top-notch observational astronomers. We have our own 2.3 meter telescope and our students can get a lot of experience that’s not so easy at many other institutions. We can do this thing well, and get a reputation for it.
The situation isn’t really fair or unfair. It’s just how it is, and while we can adapt to it, we aren’t going to be able to change it without fundamentally altering how academia works. There’s steady or growing demand for students, and diminishing demand for PhDs.
More so than ever, students should only go into grad school for love, because the dream job may not be waiting at the other end.
At the risk of making some overly general statements based on my own personal experiences, I wanted to put down some thoughts about how the approach toward science — at least astronomy — seems to differ between the U.S. and Europe. I’m hip deep, or maybe neck deep, in Hubble Space Telescope proposals in preparation for the cycle 17 review next week, and proposals are one place I’ve noticed there seems to be a different approach on average.
What’s the difference? American proposers seem to have a tendency toward narrow, well-defined questions, at least for smaller projects. Americans still manage to make large, general projects, often surveys, which promise unknown discoveries, but the typical approach is to offer a very specific problem, and then a very specific observation that will answer that questions. A much high fraction of European proposals I’ve read over the years tend to offer up a unique, interesting object, or sample of objects, and ask to observe them in some new way, often will less specific promises. The typical American reviewer will find these “fishing expeditions,” while the typical European reviewer will find the American proposals a little boring with a smaller chance of making totally new discoveries.
Personally, I think well balanced science programs should support projects of both types. I have a bias toward the American perspective, but find that single approach too limiting. There are some really cool objects we should check out because sometimes they don’t behave like people think they should, and the only way to find that out is to look. I’ve written proposals of both types, and find the European ones more fun myself. I’ve seen cases where the science analysis is so predictable, astronomers write the paper in advance and just wait for the observations to fill in a few particular numbers. Boring, to me at least, even when important.
The other area where I’ve seen differences is in how observatories and institutes are run. My particular favorite example is comparing the American’s Keck Observatory in Hawaii to the European’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are premier observatories featuring the largest optical telescopes and the best instrumentation in the world. I’ve proposed to, and observed at, both places.
The Europeans are more egalitarian, more formal, more luxurious than the Americans. The Americans are much less formal, place the science first before fairness among astronomers, and tend to put extra money into the equipment before accommodations. Maybe the differences involve making everyone happy in a European Union that has a lot of members, big and small, and letting everyone play a role. I’ll tell you though, the lodging at the VLT is the best I’ve ever experienced and the food superior as well, which makes for a nice set-up. Keck observing is done in town (Waimea) and while the dorm rooms are fine, it’s all very informal and having McDonald’s in the observing room is not unusual.
There’s a very formal procedure for making observations at the VLT. The time I went, we wanted to add a supernova to the program (these are impossible to anticipate in advance) and communicated with the director and a group with a special program at the time to observe supernovas with our instrument. The group was happy to have us make the observation, as we planned to share the data and collaborate, but we never heard back from the director’s office. So we didn’t make the observation. At Keck, we would have just done it, and worked out the other details later (which can usually be done fairly). I prefer the American approach here. Better to ask for forgiveness than not to take the data.
Now, I’m not going to say one approach is better than the other, but each has identifiable strengths and weaknesses. I’m partial to the American perspective, but I know I’m biased.
Astrobiology “Alive and Well,” But Should We Hope the ETs Aren’t?
May 2nd, 2008
Space.com reports on AbSciCon2008, with a story by Edna DeVore claiming that “Astrobiology Alive and Well.” She describes a quality meeting of the astrobiology community, with a lot of young faces, turnabouts in funding cuts, and a promising, growing future.
At the same time this is going on, with the astrobiologists all excited about the search for life on other worlds, Nick Bostrom wrote a very sobering article for Technology Review explaining why he hopes they fail. He’s doesn’t make a religious argument, or seem to be an anti-science guy in any way. He hopes they fail because he wants to be hopeful about humanity’s chances of beating extinction.
His argument is based on circumstantial evidence and probabilty, but still quite worth considering. The first bit of circumstantial evidence involves the idea known as Fermi’s Paradox. Physicist Enrico Fermi was fond of making back-of-the-envelope estimates that were very often correct. The classic estimate he did that led to the “paradox” was one in which he determined that even with slower-than-light interstellar travel, it wouldn’t take cosmologically long times at all for an intelligent technological species to send probes all over the Milky Way. Whats a few tens of millions of years in the face of a universe billions of years old already? The fact that we don’t see evidence of alien technology (UFOs nonwithstanding) means that they’re not there. Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?”
The answer to the paradox is that Fermi made some incorrect assumption. The simplest solution is that other extraterrestrial intelligences don’t exist in our galaxy, although there are many others worth exploring (Stephen Webb offers 50 solutions in his interesting book Where is Everybody?).
If there are no other intelligences out there locally as implied by the simplest solution to Fermi’s Paradox, that makes advanced techological civilizations extremely unlikely. The argument is then that there’s some “great filter,” some step leading to such civilizations, which is unlikely. It can be a difficult positive step, like the development of life at all, or multicellular life, or an easy negative step difficult to avoid, like managing not to destroy ourselves with our technology.
We’re not quite at the stage at which we can fill the Milky Way ourselves, so then have we already managed to get through the filter, or is it still ahead of us?
Bostrom would like to think that we’ve already gotten through the filter, that life arising at all, or advanced life arising from simple life, is the tough step. Failing to discover life on Mars and in space in general would mean it’s hard to do, and might be the filter.
Otherwise, if life is common beyond Earth, the filter might still be before us, and the silence that SETI finds would mean that civilizations have reached our level of technology many times before, but never much farther. Presumably because they’ve destroyed themselves.
There are other possibilities, but without a lot of data, it’s a probability game and this one has some merit.
I personally don’t feel that it’s right. I mean, it could be, in some sense, but I think that the sum of all the other possibilities is more likely than this one particular suggestion, and there’s a lot of quantitative wiggle room. As the searches of all types continue, we’ll learn more to assess this issue.
And hey, even if life isn’t common and we are unique, don’t get depressed about it. There’s still a good chance we’ll rise to the challenge and destroy ourselves! Just give us a chance…or start worrying about it now and prioritize space travel. Getting off this planet is our best insurance.
There have been a number of books/movies/tv shows presenting conflicts between rationial vs. scientific world views on the science vs. fantasy spectrum.
I submit that they’ve all been unfair.
I recall watching Northern Exposure on TV some 15 years ago, more or less. It was an interesting show about a doctor with a fellowship compelled to serve in Alaska for several years to pay off the debt. What was stupid was that he represented a scientific point of view, while the locals provided a faith-based point of view, and he never took into account the data of his experiences there in adjusting his worldview. The show didn’t play fair. They cheated. Science takes into account information from the environment in reaching conclusions. For the majority of the show, Joel just looked like an ass denying the events that occurred based on nothing. It wasn’t science. It was the suck.
This is happening on Battlestar Galactica to a certain extent. Baltar is our scientist there. He’s making the rationalist argument, but he’s also being swayed. I’m okay with that, because on the show the faith-based perspective has facts in support.
I’m very sympathetic toward Baltar. He’s a smart guy, like me. He likes women, like me. He just wants to survive, like me, and pretty much anyone reading this. He’s too often made to be the bad guy. I hope he’s redeemed in the end. He hasn’t been immoral as I’ve seen it. He’s been rationally human. The show, on the other hand, has played into irrationality. Drugs give true visions, for instance. Not in my experience, please.
Look. In a piece of fiction I’ll buy into the realities of that fiction. Just make them clear and honest. Too often we have idiocy. Characters like Joel Fleishmann who keep on with a modern, scientific worldview despite events that he sees and experiences. Change the rules, and science will figure it out. Stories that fail in this respect represent writers who don’t understand science.
Science works. We have a world of technology that demonstrates this in no uncertain terms. If you disagree, you’re wrong. Live up to it.
This is not to say that science is the be all and end all. Life is about more than that. But if you want facts to cling to, rules to understand, stick with science.
Where science conflicts with other paradigms, the other paradigms are probably wrong. This is just based on how science works. Science doesn’t work everywhere, but where it works, pay attention.
One of the questions I’ve gotten as an astronomer with science fiction sensibilities more than a few times is about how nebulas would appear if we were in one.
Phil Plait, the “Bad Astronomer,” has considered this issue and made a video about how to think about the issue:
So, nebulas look cool through a telescope, but wouldn’t look so cool from within them. That’s the suck of astronomy I guess, and a bit that sf often gets wrong (Star Trek in particular is especially guilty on this point).
My first novel, Star Dragon, got a starred review from Booklist, which a lot of librarians use in purchasing decisions. I hadn’t seen their review for Spider Star until now. It’s also a very positive starred review:
The author of Star Dragon (2003) returns with another compelling work of hard sf, this time involving a human colony on the planet Argo and some terrifying human-alien contact. Although the Argonauts have been gone for some two million years, the technology they left behind has proved useful to later settlers. Then the team leader of a training mission on Argo’s larger moon inadvertently triggers an ancient but still functioning doomsday weapon that apparently was created for the Argonauts by another, even more advanced race of traders. If it isn’t deactivated, the weapon may well destroy Argo. Specialists in a wide variety of sciences embark on a desperate search for the advanced aliens’ main station, the Spider Star, which, according to the so-called Saga of the Spider Star, is neither star nor planet but “a real place, and its golden heart is the source of all good and evil.” The sciences and technics involved in the story run the gamut from astrophysics, astronomy, and meteorology to high-tech engineering, robotics, and astrobiology. Once again, Brotherton meticulously creates fully integrated, three-dimensional characters and complex interrelationships and rivalries, which with vivid depiction of the alien cultures as well as the planet Argo, the starship, and the Spider Star itself, make this a must-read for hard-core hard-sf fans. — Sally Estes
