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
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Starlinks

July 5th, 2009

I must not be posting these as often as before, because there seems to be a lot again.

Website for Blast, a documentary about astronomers doing astronomy. Anyone seen this?

How ebooks differ from digital music. Yeah, but I’m not quite sure this article gets to a business model that works…

Atlantic magazine article about re-engineering the Earth. Serious issues we may have to deal with in our lifetimes. After seeing how some issues have played out in recent years, I worry for my species. If climate change does make things bad enough, I hope the denialists will at least have the integrity to shut the fuck up about how to fix it, because that will help more than anything else they’ve done so far. But here’s a good story idea:

The scariest thing about geo-engineering, as it happens, is also the thing that makes it such a game-changer in the global-warming debate: it’s incredibly cheap. Many scientists, in fact, prefer not to mention just how cheap it is. Nearly everyone I spoke to agreed that the worst-case scenario would be the rise of what David Victor, a Stanford law professor, calls a “Greenfinger”—a rich madman, as obsessed with the environment as James Bond’s nemesis Auric Goldfinger was with gold. There are now 38 people in the world with $10 billion or more in private assets, according to the latest Forbes list; theoretically, one of these people could reverse climate change all alone. “I don’t think we really want to empower the Richard Bransons of the world to try solutions like this,” says Jay Michaelson, an environmental-law expert, who predicted many of these debates 10 years ago.

Interesting idea about getting at the origin of life: run simulations and see if and how it appears. I think success here is going to depend a lot on where Moore’s Law turns over, but it could be really compelling and teach us a lot. Maybe more about the process in general rather than our own history. But if we have fast enough computers and time, it will be interesting.

Life is good if you’re over 55. Tends to suck if you’re under 25. Just economics here, and somewhat counterintuitive.

The science of Angels and Demons, from Cern.

Turkish game show to try to convert atheists. Ugh. Not only does this sound like a bad idea, it sounds like horrible TV. I’m going to guess the fix will be in.

Bunch of recent stories about radio waves “faster than light.“ Well, no. God, I hate this sort of thing. Radio waves are light. They travel at the speed of light. What is being discussed has to do with the velocity of a pattern, nothing physical itself, and no information is being sent faster than light. I think the work is probably of interest, but the press release and coverage has concentrated on the wrong issue here. Again. Ugh.

On how Michael Moorcock could write a book in three days. Follow-up with Lester Dern’s story formula. As a slow writer, I like to look at these sorts of articles, although I tend not to use them.

New show on the Discovery Channel: Science of the Movies. Looks promising, but I’ve not seen any of it yet. (Seems to be some video clips here, but slow loading currently for me.)

The Planck telescope is in space, cooled down, and ready to start a new study of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

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