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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...
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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
Sicklinks
May 13th, 2009
I’m sick, not the links! At least not most of them. I’m not dead yet, and I’m feeling better. Got several good original things I want to blog about, but the energy levels are still lagging.
Hot rumors about Scarlett Johansson on set of Iron Man 2 in her leather Black Widow costume.
Did you know that Superman began to fly because of budget constraints on the Superman cartoon? It was easier to just lift a picture of Superman over the background than to draw him crouching down and leaping.
Interesting article about bad science, good science fiction.
And our entries regarding evolution and creationism for today. Think creationists are only going after evolution? Oh no. Astronomy, too! Science-ignorant fundie bastards on the Texas Board of Education now want to question redshifts and the cosmic background radiation, which may not be consistent with a 6000 year old universe. Another take here on teaching the non-existent controversy. On a more positive note, progress on abiogensis: RNA produced in a primordial soup experiment. That’s just about the smoking gun that would indicate life could arise spontaneously on the early Earth, as RNA is self-replicating.
Onto telescopes. Phil Plait has a great article about Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Hubble. Of course, they’re working to service Hubble now, and while I’ve awaited this for years, between the travel, the illness, and some personal issues this past week, I really haven’t been following it the way I’d like to be. I just hope it goes well. And here’s another interesting article about the Thirty Meter Telescope that is being designed.
If you steal his books, Stephen King will mock you:
The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys. And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.
Jeremy Tolbert shares the five books that made him a better science fiction writer.
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May 13th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
The ID twits are apparently coming after the cognitive sciences as well: http://boingboing.net/2008/10/24/cartesian-dualism-th.html
May 14th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Besides biology and astronomy, geology is another unpopular science among creationists…
I witnessed a very odd uncomfortable surreal conversation a few years ago. A (not particularly religious) father in a home was showing me a book of beautiful photographs of minerals and gems and such; his Christian fundamentalist teenage daughter passed through the room, and he invited her to come look at the photos. She instantly became very upset and said something like “Don’t talk to me about stuff that’s millions of years old!” and rushed out of the room.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:44 am
You guys are totally right. There pretty much isn’t a single science that makes sense to a fundamentalist of any sort. The Grand Canyon was carved by the flood, which also got the dinosaurs and left the fossils. The prophets heard God, and didn’t just suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy (or, that is the mechanism God uses, but only for some sufferers, and other times he’s a burning bush).
If I had a fundamentalist teenage daughter, I think I would become very upset and rush out of the room. I would have failed to have trained my child to think for herself, and failed to protect her from those who prey on innocent minds to spread their nonsense.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Hoping you’re feeling much better.. best wishes,