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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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 »>I’ve been invited to participate in another sfsignal.com Mind-Meld event. I like these. They’re fun, and the spectrum of answers to the interesting science fiction questions make for fascinating reading. The question for next week is: Which SciFi movie ending do you wish you could change? Well, there are a lot. I decided I’d take […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 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 »>I blogged about an article a few weeks ago I considered somewhat bogus, misrepresenting a tenuous connection to real science. Interestingly, a publicist for the movie, involved in setting up a promotional event for the movie at MIT with some physicists, did a drive by post that was pretty funny. He assumed I wasn’t a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Science just keeps marching on, this time with the military in lock step. Soldiers are being given “laser eyes.” No, it isn’t Superman’s heat vision, but it’s still interesting. Basically, binocular set-ups with GPS, thermal imaging, and laser ranging allowing for precise location of enemies or other objectives, up to miles away. The technology is […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>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 »>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 »>Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.” — Douglas Adams There’s not a lot of science in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it’s a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »>As we transitioned in class last night from properties of light to size scales, light-speed and how its finite velocity gives us distances (in light years) seemed a natural course for the lesson plan. One of the things we did that I thought resonated with last week’s “Cold Equations” stuff was looking at two versions […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 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 »>Jim Kelly’s essay in Asimov’s this month is about “mundane science fiction.” Mundane science fiction is, according to wiki: Mundane Science Fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction. Inspired by an idea of Julian Todd, the Mundane SF movement was founded in 2004 by novelist Geoff Ryman among others.[1] It focuses on stories set on […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »>