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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Last week I linked to an article about how U2 was the greatest science ficiton band. I like U2, but think that the claim is ridiculous. Am I alone? I suggested some bands like Queen, Iron Maiden, the Orbital, and Blue Oyster Cult were much better choices. U2 just doesn’t do that much stuff I […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »>First, what does it mean to be original? Well, I guess it means to be first with something. But what does that mean? Well, maybe nothing, really. Over at Techdirt there’s an article suggesting that nothing is original. It’s the old idea that nothing is created in a vacuum, and specifically applied to our current […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Leaping off from a thread started by James Nicoll on his LJ blog where he blames Larry Niven for entrenching the idea in science fiction that a supernova close to another star can cause the second star to also go supernova, based on his 1966 story “At the Core” which underlies his entire Known Space […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »>I wrote a short post about homeschooling last year that criticized one specific opinion held by one particular homeschooler, and while it was a good criticism, it got in the way of the positive potential homeschooling has. I said then, and I will say again, that I have no love for homeschooling done for wrong […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »>So, over in science blogger/skeptic land, there’s been a discussion about how to talk to the believers. This comes up for well-educated, rational people all the time. Most of my friends have advanced degrees, talk about things they know well, and don’t have totally wacky beliefs. The ones that do have wacky beliefs wear them […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>In addition to being a great writer, Eric Nylund is an old friend of mine. I first met him and became a fan of his at the Clarion West Writing Workshop back in the 1990s. Eric has written original science fiction and fantasy for well over a decade now, and more recently has hit the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>They say that the golden years are your last ones in life, the gold age of comic books was the 1940s, and while there was a similar boom in pulp sf, that the golden age of science fiction is when you were twelve. You’ve probably already seen this, or heard of it, but for those […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>I was reading a book of quotes, and one of the notes mentioned that Einstein, much to my consternation, believed that people should NOT read science fiction. His reasoning? It distorts science, and gives people the illusion of understanding science. Hmm, shades of Buzz Aldrin here. I have some of the same objections as Einstein, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »>Build a small monster, then soak it in water overnight. Heh. More seriously, my guide for this sort of mad scientist activity is the fossil record. Anything resembling a giant monster there is plausible. Look at dinosaurs, giant sloths, giant lizards and crocs, etc. Plausible. Anything else needs some more work. The limits on giant […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Cliches are a part of reality. No matter how many times people have seen some things, they want to see more. They like riffs on the familiar. People like new things, but not too new. Mass audiences never seem to tire of cliches. They abound in fantasy and horror in particular: vampires, werewolves, wizards, elves, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments »>I mean it, literally, as a premise for a story to learn about ourselves. A couple of months ago, I wrote about subtle science fiction, in which human nature was explored by changing some aspect of human nature and seeing the results, rather than the more common juxtaposition of human beings in novel or extreme […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »>In response to my post about science fiction as a science blogger, which I wrote in response to the upcoming discussion about using science fiction to promote and teach science at ScienceOnline09, I got an interesting response From a Sci-Fi Standpoint as part of a post titled “It’s science fiction, not science class.” Yeah, but […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »>