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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Prometheus Unsound (Non-Review, No Spoilers)
June 9th, 2012
I’m not going to write a full review here. Let me say, however, that my expectations were way too high. Not on the visuals, the acting, or that we’d have a few moments of awesome and sheer horror here and there…
But parts are dumb, jumbled, confusing, inexplicable, and forced. That’s tough beans when you’re shooting for something closer to addressing profound questions about the nature of mankind and its purpose, questions about the purpose of creation and the responsibilities of the creators and the created, serious emotional questions about what is the nature of relationships between parents and their children.
And after about a third of the way into the film you start having WTF? moments every other scene.
There’s some things to like, but not enough of them to give them a fair shake.
Maybe after I’ve had some reflection time I’m write a proper review, but in the meantime, here’s one from Locus (spoilers) I don’t disagree with too much. The thing, I think, was fixable. Or maybe it started out fixed and the Hollywood process broke it. In any event, it’s not going to stand up to scrutiny as a great example of science fiction. More like Alien 3 or 4, or the first Aliens vs. Predator movies, perhaps shot with a bigger budget, unfortunately.
There’s already a “science of Prometheus” review I see, which I’ll go read now. I wish the problems were only limited to the science, but the more I think about it, the less satisfied I am on the level of common sense, story, and emotion.
(Edit: Having read the above “science of” article, I am reminded of things that bugged me that I decided to ignore at the time in the interest of giving the movie a chance, but about 1/3 of the way through stopped doing the heavy lifting to suspend my disbelief. Fixable stuff, mostly, but flawed as shown on screen. I actually think a post with some of the problems and how they could have been made to work would be instructive.)
Now I will be prepared to be underwhelmed by the Spider-Man reboot…
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I wanna comment
The acceptance that at some point in that universe’s history an Alien fucked a lemur or shit on a possum allowed me to simply sit back and enjoy the sound and fury.