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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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 »>NOTE: I’m keeping the below post as originally written. It will be superseded by a post to come as the issue is more complicated than I appreciated. A friend of mine has a story coming out and wanted to doublecheck some issues of colors on a planet orbiting an M-star. My friend supplied me with […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »>Here’s a good write-up of some work related to mine that was also presented this week in St. Louis at the AAS meeting. It involves post-starburst galaxies, whose relationship to post-starburst quasars isn’t entirely clear to me just yet (I’m planning a project that should help answer that question to my own satisfaction next year). […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No 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 »>Gregg Easterbrook wrote an Atlantic June 2008 article “The Sky Is Falling” in which he argues for more attention to the issue of near-Earth asteroids, which I think are very much worth paying attention to. He also suggests that establishing a sustainable moon base is a waste of effort. Do you agree? My friend and […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 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 »>FOR RELEASE: 9:30 AM Central Daylight Time, June 2, 2008 HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SPIES GALAXY/BLACK HOLE EVOLUTION IN ACTION A set of twenty-nine Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of an exotic type of active galaxy known as a “post-starburst quasar” show that interactions and mergers drive both galaxy evolution and the growth of super-massive black […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>A few weeks ago I mentioned I’d been asked to participate in a press conference regarding my research at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. Well, that happens Monday morning. I’ll be posting the press release here to coincide with the press conference and will post about my experience afterwards. I’m hoping it […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I should have known that some astronomer would have already tackled, quantitatively, some aspects of what I discussed as an “Academic Ponzi Scheme” a few weeks ago. Travis Metcalfe wrote a paper last year which is publically available here. Here’s the title and abstract: The Production Rate and Employment of Ph.D. Astronomers Authors: Travis S. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>Yesterday I was going through the mail I’d missed while I’ve been traveling, and came across the official letter finally that I am being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure on July 1, 2008, the start of our fiscal year. Woo hoo! So I knew this was happening. My department and department chair all supported […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>Over at www.sfsignal.com here. Just plain missed it last week while I was traveling, which is dumb of me since sfsignal is one of the best sites to keep up with the science fiction world. MIND MELD: Scientific Accuracy in Stories Science fiction would be nothing without the science. Who doesn’t like reading about new […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>My mother is reading Spider Star and liking it significantly more than Star Dragon, primarily because she feels more for the characters. She hasn’t finished the book yet, but did tell me on the phone the other day that she’d noticed an error. Not a typo, but an outright mistake. She claimed I’d gotten the […]
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