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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The public isn’t as well educated about science as they should be. That’s pretty much always been true, and will likely remain true given the quick pace of science and its effect on our lives, but we can do a lot better than we are now. But there’s also been growth in the spread of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>There are a lot of myths, many perpetuated by movies with directors looking for more explosions, about what happens when someone is tossed out the airlock by Vogons or whatever nasty aliens are crewing the spaceship of doom. I did a little research about this last year for my science and science fiction class, but […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>Recently a friend of mine pointed me at this story. The issue of contention is that English has become the de facto language of science. In most fields, almost every paper is published in English, and all conferences use English. This didn’t use to be the case (and most graduate programs in the sciences had […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »>Yesterday I blogged about the evolution vs. intelligent design “controversy” in the guise of bashing Ben Stein for falling prey to sloppy thinking and misdirection. There is no scientific controversy about evolution in general, although we continue to study the process and learn more about it. Most creationists don’t actually understand it, or many other […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>Last month I wrote about the ten best science-based science fiction movies, which was fun and made me think a lot about all the average to decent movies that still fail to make the science grade in one or more ways. It’s too easy to make a list of dozens of movies with the worst […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>Contact lenses are under development that will allow wearers to watch video and maps beamed directly into their eyes similar to the overlays from the Terminator movies. Maybe I need to add those movies to my science-based sf films….naw. I had similar technology in my first novel, and my pro-scitech stance led me to have […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »>So there’s a new movie coming out next month, Jumper, based on an sf novel by Steven Gould, whose writing I’ve admired over the years (“Peaches for Mad Molly” is a truly original story). I just came across this story about the director Doug Liman and lead actor Hayden Christensen of Star Wars infamy visiting […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments »>From time to time I’ll write about the courses I’m teaching, at least when I think it’s interesting behind the scenes. It should be this semester. Last year and this year both I’ve started my Science and Science Fiction class with “The Cold Equations,” a famous proto-hard sf story by Tom Godwin. My course is […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »>I posted this originally at www.sfnovelists.com, but decided that I’d like it in my own archives, too, and it would make a good filler for a lazy Sunday (which isn’t really because I have to write a self-assessment and run for three hours today, but that’s my problem). Anyway, here it is in case you […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »>Every top ten list is biased, and so is this one. My particular biases are that the movies have to strive for, and achieve most of the time, scientific accuracy. At least nothing too grossly wrong, and some instances of, “yeah, that’s not intuitive but that’s how it would work!” I’ll limit my list to […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments »>“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.†— Albert Einstein This is going to be a call for reason to the smart people out there who do stupid things too often, too consistently, or too loudly. All smart people do stupid things. I’m a really smart guy, and I’ve been […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »>Recently I blogged about the five qualities required to be a scientist. I realized I left one out, thinking the categories of dedication and curiosity covered it in some fashion, but they don’t quite do it. The sixth quality is love of science. Love of science and your particular chosen field are what leads to […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>