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 try not to use this blog as a platform only to rant, but I do rant from time to time. Things do get me upset, and strong emotions (good are bad) are good starting places for meaningful writing. I have a strong sense of justice and fairness, so I never have a lack of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Apparently Margaret Atwood, the author of the Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, doesn’t believe that men walked on the moon. Maybe it’s worse than that — she’s trying to hedge her bets because she’s a “smart” person who knows being skeptical about this is idiotic and doesn’t want to admit to herself that she’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »>One of my old, fairly innocuous posts has been climbing up the popularity lists: The Importance of Science in Our Lives. It’s just a link to an article online with a little commentary. I see on my statistics pages that a lot of people arrive using google searches of “Importance of Science.” I wonder if […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments »>I saw this person, Sharon Lamb, being interviewed on CNN or MSNBC last week. This article, “Superheroes send out ‘wrong message’ to boys,” covers the same things she said on tv. For instance: “There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday,” Dr Lamb told the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »>By “expert” I mean world-class, whether or not you’re super smart or super talented. I’m starting to lose my faith in innate “talent” after some recent reading. Two of the books are Talent is Overrated and Outliers. I’ve got another book on this topic coming, too, more on the inspirational side of things. Some of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>A few years ago I compiled a list of online astronomy resources for writers following that year’s Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers. Every year there are new links we pass around and discuss, so I wanted to do an addendum, if you will, adding more links to the ones I’ve previously posted (and which […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>This is a true story. It’s kind of funny, kind of stupid, but it’s true and that’s the important thing. I was a smart kid growing up, usually at the top of my class, always fiddling with one project or another. I was into the stars, dinosaurs, chemistry, science fiction, making movies, writing stories, chess, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>Both science fiction fans and the general public complain about the failure of predictions of future technology. Where are the flying cars? Colonies on the moon? Jet packs? And food in pill form? Well, the last one is probably the least plausible of the above, and it could be argued that we have the other […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>I’m teaching the last week of my astronomy class, and the last topic I’m covering is exoplanets: how we find them and their properties as we currently understand them. The textbook I’m using is brand new, Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson, and covers some aspects of this hot subtopic pretty well, but it […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>A friend of mine in Brazil is giving a public talk today. She was charged with talking about “Journeys Through the Universe” and asked me to come up with some videos she could use. I’ll embed the videos I suggested to her below, but I wanted to add one link first to a really nifty […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>There are spoilers ahead concerning the story “Neutron Star” by Larry Niven. Be warned. If you want to download and read the story for under a dollar, check it out on fictionwise.com. If you’re not going to jump out and read the story any time soon, you can familiarize or remind yourself about it at […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Following up my recent post on this topic, I came across another really nice one, although a bit low-tech, very similar to a book I used to have and use back in the 1990s when the web wasn’t so dense. Credits to Eric Nylund for this one, which he uses when writing Halo novels: Atlas […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>