Spider Star
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...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"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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Heroes for a Scientist of My Generation
October 6th, 2009
I used to think I didn’t have heroes. Not in the sense that most people mean, and not being allowed to count superheroes.
But I realized I did, and had had a lot of them growing up through college.
Mine are biased toward physics and astronomy. Here they are, in no particular order.
Einstein. Sort of goes without saying. Even growing up in the 1970s, 20 years after his death, Einstein was quite visible with books and TV shows about his theories. I didn’t see a lot of live footage of him that I can remember. Here is some.
Carl Sagan. Cosmos was a big event in my life. He was an inspirational guy.
Stephen Hawking. After Einstein, Hawking seemed the heir apparent when it came to things like black holes. Here he asks some big questions in a TED lecture.
Roger Penrose. Hawking’s partner on a lot of work. I got to see him speak in person at Rice University where I went to college in the 1980s. I don’t know that I agree with his ideas of consciousness, but he’s wicked smart and interesting.
Richard Feynmann. His books, both academic and anecdotal, were cool, brainy fun. He also seemed like a great guy who lived a great life.
Mr. Spock. Yeah, he’s fictional, but he was the guy on TV that kept pushing logic and science as ways of solving problems.
Isaac Asimov. Did anyone avoid reading at least one of his 400+ books on some subject or other? And his monthly essays in his science fiction magazine were quite special.
Encyclopedia Brown. Okay, final entry on the list and another fictional character. I loved how he used keen observation and an understanding of how things worked — science — to solve crimes. I just loved these. I never saw any TV versions, but was interested to see that there were some. For example…
Take a few of these out of the mix and I’d still have become a scientist. Take all of them away, and perhaps not. Art, engineering, computer programming, and writing could all have been my primary career.
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Great collection of vids.
Nice to see one of those BBC Bite-sized science programs again; they seemed quite balanced and succinct… So it doesn’t seem a computer can simulate consciousness at this stage but only analyses the visual aspects of an object to compare with its memory. Even replicating the human sensory input might not explain it on a quantum level: there was an experiment that showed the brain signal an action before the person could possibly decide to make that action. So whatever consciousness is, it’s way beyond anything a computer can simulate.
Maybe, but I will reserve judgment until we can actually duplicate, with some high level of accuracy, the brain electronically. Then we can ask it.
[…] Brown is a fictional boy detective in a series of stories by Donald J. Sobol, and one of my heroes, who uses facts and logic to solve mysteries. The stories about him always ended with him telling […]