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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Science in Fiction: The Old Man and the Sea
January 11th, 2012
There’s a fun, literary homework problem in the textbook I’m using this semester (Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson). It’s a pretty good textbook overall, although it’s a bit calculus heavy for when some of our students take my course and it’s short on example problems. One thing I do like is that the authors are well educated outside of science, and have some culturally interesting asides and work in literary references into the text and homework. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is a favorite of mine, but I don’t recalling catching this howler when I read it, and I should have:
“It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the Sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends.”
One way of checking the accuracy of this passage is to look up the coordinates of Rigel and go use a planetarium program and set it for Cuba, 6pm, September 15th. A bit easier to get the same answer is to determine the local sidereal time at that time and time of the year and comparing the coordinates of Rigel (local sidereal time or LST is basically the same as the right ascension coordinate of stars passing directly overhead).
The easiest way for myself, and I imagine most people reading here, is to realize that Rigel is a very bright star and part of the best recognized constellation: Orion. Rigel is the knee opposite the bright red shoulder of Betelguese.
Now, knowing which star is Rigel, Betelguese, Sirius, Deneb, Vega, or whatever, is not something the average person knows. I do think the average person, even those living in larger cities, knows Orion. They also might be able to recall that it’s a constellation easily seen in the early evening in…the winter. Like now. In September, at sunset, it is not in the sky. It hasn’t yet risen, and won’t be up until very late in the night.
Don’t let Hemingway’s poor astronomy knowledge stop you from reading The Old Man in the Sea. It’s a really good read otherwise, and one of the inspirations for my novel Star Dragon.
(T.S. Eliot has an even worse howler that I’ll dig up and discuss at a later date.)
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Surely that passage should read more like:
Ok, i’m being a bit pedantic here (i’ve made my fair share of errors in years past) but my point is: why mention the name of the star at all? Seems like author intrusion to me.
Yeah, it is a bit of author intrusion, but it is in keeping with the point of view in the story, which is omniscent. Literary writers do that more than genre writers.
The reason to mention the name of the star is to be specific, give authority to the voice telling the tale. Being specific is usually much better than being general. Doesn’t work so well when the authority is wrong, however.
Something went wrong my comments there, was supposed to include how i would write it: *He did not know the name of that star, yet so familiar and prominent amongst the first few, before the others he knew would soon be out – all his distant friends.*
Anyway, guess i have to bear in mind that styles change over the years, and Hemmingway is certainly regarded as one of the finest writers of his time.
Might I just say that if you keep doing things like this, I will love you forever (in a totally Internet sense). I find it fascinating when scientists look at films and challenge the science (however basic) presented there. In this case, you’re doing something I’ve never seen before: correcting basic astronomy in literary texts (i.e., the positions of stars).
So keep it up. This stuff is fascinating!
Thanks for the love! Just spreading some information from Barbara Ryden and Brad Peterson and their fun homework question. Hemingway should have taken astronomy… I’ll try to do a few more of these in the near future. I’ve got a couple more bad examples and a couple of good ones, too.
Slight typo in the last but. I’d like the read The Old Man in the Sea, but it’s a bit off. 😛
Otherwise I liked the post a whole lot.
Also a slight typo in my post. It should read last bit, not but. Bah! 😀