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...
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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."
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Interstellar World Building
March 15th, 2010
I’ve discussed some world building before, and this has traditionally been an important topic in science fiction and fantasy. I want to get a little more specific where it comes to space-based interstellar science fiction.
These days I think it’s becoming necessary to be very specific in any human-based, Earth-oriented future to use real astronomy and real star maps and real stars. You should know how far apart stars are, their stellar types and lifetimes and other assorted details, the life zones of these stars, if there are things known about planets, etc. This is an intimidating amount of knowledge for anyone other than a professional astronomer, although that’s changing. It’s getting much easier for non-scientists to get a hold of star maps and build an interstellar empire based on the local solar neighborhood.
Marshall Ryan Maresca has an interesting post on interstellar worldbuilding that’s worth a read. In particular I am intrigued by cheap or free software that’s available to do some of this stuff, and he recommends one called ChView:
One tool I use, besides an enormous Excel spreadsheet, is a program called ChView, which is a fascinating– if slightly frustrating– program. For a piece of free-on-the-internet software, it’s really good at visualizing interstellar maps. But it isn’t quite everything I’d want it to be. That’s all right, the person who wrote the program wasn’t doing it for me, and I think it’s great. Check it out.
There are others out there. There’s Celestia and its add-ons. There’s Sol Station. Anyone use these? Comments or criticisms? Recommendations for others?
I can do this stuff the old-fashioned way, but I’m more than game to make it easy on myself, too!
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I’ve used Celestia a bit, but more for fun. I’d use it for more than that if I could figure it out, but I’m no astronomer, and I found it a bit confusing trying to figure it out. What someone like me really needs is a sort of ‘celestia for dummies’ software. I’ve used other online resources to try and figure out the local stellar neighbourhood. One good one for me is http://kisd.de/~krystian/starmap/, except it doesn’t appear to like my macbook (doesn’t work anymore).
Yeah, I have a macbook and still find some things don’t run (and I haven’t got virtual Windows running yet).
Starmaps are cool. I have a great book that I used to use, but software seems the way to go now. I’ll check out your link, Gary. Thanks!
Winchell Chung’s website has all kinds of star maps:
http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html
I agree with you that research should be done in star mapping for accuracy, but what a Headache! On top of the sheer numbers of stars and their astronomical distances many of the potentially habitable star systems that we know of that could possibly have Earth-like planets are probably far too young to host sapient life to begin with, and when they become old enough, our system may be done with its sapient life!
Yes, the timing issue is an important one to keep in mind.
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If you are willing to pay a bit, my recommendation for 3D star mapping is Astrosynthesis by Nbos
http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm
It is designed for RPG game masters, but it works very well for SF authors. Walter Hunt (author of the Dark Wing series) uses it. It allows one to attach notes to various systems and planets, figure spheres of influence, trade routes, things like that.
I hit the comment tab to recommend Winchell’s stuff, and then discovered it’s already been done.
so I’m seconding (thirding?) it. his maps are gorgeous.
[…] up my recent post on this topic, I came across another really nice one, although a bit low-tech, very similar to a book I used to […]