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
I had a post over the weekend where I claimed that life on a planet around a type M star (see classifications here) would be like living in a red light district. Not the sex part, just the red light part. M stars are cool as stars go, around 3000 Kelvin or a bit less, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Brian Green has an op-ed in the New York Times speaking about the personal importance of science in our lives. It is a good article, and meaningful, in my opinion. Science has enabled you to read this post, but it has also done so much more. Reflect on that. Sometimes I feel like I’m a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments »>I overslept and almost missed it yesterday! The traveling, stress, and lack of sufficient sleep caught up to me. I made it over okay, with a couple of minutes to spare. I wanted to make some adjustments to the slides and practice the talk again just before the actual event, but didn’t have time. The […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I generally only censor spam or super obnoxious posts from my blog, and luckily haven’t had any in the second category (knock on plastic). I’m in turns bemused and annoyed with comments on some entries, like this one, about the antiscience propoganda piece that is Expelled. I know I’m going to be preaching to the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>As a professional astronomer with a faculty job as a professor at the University of Wyoming, I find it very common that people outside of academia don’t really understand what it is I “do.” A lot of misconceptions floating around there, so let me knock some down first before building something in their place. First […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>“A dark-matter world holds the key to a weapon from the heart of a sun.” That’s the tagline on the cover. My new hard science fiction novel, Spider Star, was published by Tor this week. I’m pretty happy to finally have the book out, the current expression of my attempts to make my career in […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>The Earth is toast. New and improved calculations make a strong case that when the sun expands into a red giant several billion years from now our planet will spiral into the sun’s photosphere and disintegrate. The space.com article also suggests that there is a way to save the Earth, at least for a while. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 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 »>I was thinking today about the “Reals” of the Heroes Network and what superpowers are now within the reach of our science and technology. Most superpowers are ridiculously unphysical, as described in the really fun book, Physics of Superheroes, which the author James Kakalios fashioned after a class he teaches at the University of Minnesota. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 107 Comments »>A few days ago there was a New York Times Freakonomics blog entry on this question that’s worth a read. I suspect anyone finding their way here is going to agree with the people interviewed there, and with me, that the answer is “yes.” In particular there, the question referred to “manned” space exploration, which […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No 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 »>So yesterday I had a post about what I thought were the ten best science fiction movies in terms of the physical science. I’ve been convinced to make a couple of substitutions and will do that over at www.sfnovelists.com tomorrow with a link from here. One reaction I often get when I become critical about […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »>