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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Sunday Starlinks
February 3rd, 2013
I’ve had a crappy week, productivity wise…jet lag hits me harder than ever, and my schedule is pretty loose and not forcing me to suffer too much from day to day. I can’t tell how long I’m going to sleep when I feel tired. It could be 3 hours, or 9. I have too much to do to be low productivity, and it’s already cost me one project by not being prompt enough.
Ok, let’s get to some links!
John Joseph Adams pointed me at this planetary study guide from a teacher: http://www.neatorama.com/2013/02/01/Planetary-Study-Guide/ Let me just say, this person is not a teacher. Not of correct information. How many errors do YOU see? Probably more than this so-called “teacher” who should lose the job.
No, Pluto did not become a black hole as suggested in the last link! Actually, it’s become a special project.
The 12 things that ruined Superman. Not mentioned was that he wasn’t that interesting to start with.
An interview with the thoughtful and talented Ursula K. Le Guin (Thanks, Todd!):
No, because after all in writing if you don’t have to mention the doorknob you don’t. I think one reason why most science-fiction movies are so lousy is that in them you do have to imagine the doorknob and you have to design it. And every single visual object has to be designed to tie in together. And then you get into a literalism which is a little bit soul-killing. But in writing you get away with murder. You just suggest something. So much of fantasy and science fiction is just the art of suggestion. You don’t really tell people that much, but they think you have because they imagine it.
Xkcd on Cessnas over other planets, with some help from Geoffrey Landis.
An infographic about the Kyoto protocol, asking if it worked. I don’t need an infographic to know it didn’t, unfortunately. As a species, we probably need need another solution than fossil fuel austerity.
The first porn star to go to space? Not my first choice.
About half of Americans don’t believe in evolution. Nearly half of Americans believe in ghosts, too. Wish I could say I was shocked.
Also not shocked that NASA may have known the Challenger astronauts were to become ghosts, and not tell them. That’s just a crushing thing to decide.
Quantum foam. Rabid physicists? Hope not, if they are to be creators of universes.
Learn some of the issues involved with climate change from this quality video based on the scientific literature:
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Perhaps a significant number of those persons who believe in ghosts have had “encounters with entities” or ghosts or whatever. I myself had a tactile/aural hallucination (at least, I assume that’s what it was) of a “ghost” when I was young. It was utterly prosaic, and indistinguishable from normal perceptions and ordinary experience, except that the thing that happened was impossible, and so it must have been a hallucination.
I suppose Edmund Gurney and Oliver Lodge and people like that were most likely right when they suggested most encounters with “the dead” as apparitions were hallucinations, and created by the unconscious minds of the persons who encountered them. But still, I don’t blame people from believing their encounters were actual experiences with the dead. People tend to believe their senses, and from what I’ve experienced and read, encounters with “ghosts” are experienced like all the other normal sensory experiences we have, and tend to believe.