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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Utopias in Every Way — Except as Good Stories?
September 17th, 2008
There’s a long tradition of writing about utopias, or, conversely, dystopias. Societies in which everything is perfect, or perfectly awful, due to some experiment in how to live, some new technologies, or a new religion or philosophy. The purpose in writing the utopia story is often to describe how the author thinks people could get along better and live in peace and harmony. Sometimes it’s more pointed, as a contrast to some particular regime in power, or satirical, and actually subtly poking holes in someone else’s ideas.
But taken at face value, a utopia is a place of peace and harmony where everybody is happy — at least as happy as possible as a group.
We were discussing these ideas on an email list I’m on for my old Austin, Texas writing group the Slugtribe. I want to recount part of the exchange I found particularly insightful about the power of story and the diversity of writing.
One member opined that he didn’t like utopia stories because they tended to be boring. Perfect society, no conflict, hence boring.
Another, Russ Williams, made a really insightful response:
In the spirit of philosophizing:
> Perfect societies have no conflict.
Depends on the definition of perfect… For a Klingon, a perfect society would surely include conflict! The more, the better! In the real world, for most libertarians and capitalists, for instance, a perfect society would include economic conflict. A perfect society could also include “low stakes” conflict, e.g. games, which could be interesting. Gamers would not find a society perfect if it literally had no conflict.
> No conflict means no drama.
Well… drama can come from other sources besides conflict. Problems with nature (“To Build a Fire”, speaking of Jack London), solving a mystery (not all mysteries involve crime/conflict) or historical riddle, psychological self-discovery, personal development and striving for excellence in some skill, voyages and exploration, scientific and technological research and development and problem solving, etc.
> No drama means it’s pretty boring.
A lot of hard SF is interesting to its readers because of the ideas more than the drama. There’s also Borges/etc-style meta-fiction that can be interesting due to clever ways of playing with writing and literature rather than any drama per se.
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting set of counterpoints to a narrower view, and a good reminder that there are ultimately no rules in writing other than that you write something interesting and worth reading. The perfect society need not be boring to read about.
Anyone have favorite utopian stories that worked well? Dystopias? I’ll toss out 1984 by Orwell as my favorite dystopia, and LeGuin’s The Dispossessed as my favorite utopian story.
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The Sheep look up as my favourite dystopian story. And Ian Bank’s Culture series as my favourite utopian society.
Star Trek would have come in first if they hadn’t released so much pc dribble in the last ten years.
Ah yeah, the Culture series. I’ve only read one or two, but liked them quite a bit.
As for Star Trek, they solved their utopia problem by having conflicts with aliens. They never quite explained how human beings solved their problems, however, at least not to my satisfaction.