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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
Six Sexy Smart Women from Science and Science Fiction
July 7th, 2009
Over the weekend I did six sexy and smart guys from science and science fiction. Seems like fair play to do the same for the women. First thing though is that I’m staying the hell away from Denise Richards as that astrophysicist in the James Bond movie, “Dr.” Christmas Jones. Laughable. Let’s get some women who can carry smart.
Gillian Anderson played Dana Scully from the X-files. Found a Youtube video with a lot of shots of her, and the worst English you can imagine, questioning her hotness! Incredible.
OK, Mythbusters isn’t exactly science, but it’s sort of close…Kari Byron. Sexy and smart though, for sure.
Abby Scuito, the hot goth chick from NCIS. What tattoo will she choose, and where will she put it? (She should check out the science tattoos webpage on my sidebar for ideas…)
Jodie Foster playing Elanor Arroway (based on real-life SETI scientist Jill Tarter), in Contact:
Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Klingon wedding bonus goodness. (Star Trek has some other good candidates in 7 of 9, Bellona, etc.).
Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the Scoobies very own computer scientist, until she took her smarts and applied them to learning witchcraft. I confess, I like the “dark Willow” look and anything set to Evanescence.
I’m kind of pleasantly surprised (occasionally horrified) by all the amateur music videos/star tributes on Youtube.
Now, I didn’t have much in the way of real-life scientists on this list. You make this kind of list, it should be celebrities or quasi-celebrities. There are some sexy scientists I run into at astronomy meetings, but I’m not going to go all stalkerish and dig up photos off of Facebook or their homepages. Ick. And it generally takes years to get a PhD and do work worth recognition and our society tends to judge younger women as sexy (although there are certainly more mature women who are very hot, too). However, the brain is the ultimate sex organ, and I like women who know how to stimulate mine by using theirs.
I’m quite willing to believe I’ve missed some famous and sexy women scientists, perhaps from fields I’m less familiar with. Anyone have suggestions?
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July 7th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Catharine Asaro? Jennifer Oulette (I’m probably spelling that wrong) And isn’t Ellie from Contact based on a real person?
Come on, I’m sure there are a **few**!
July 7th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I’m a little hesitant to put living people not on TV regularly on lists like this, and as far as I know we don’t have any sexy women scientists/science fiction writers running around like Neil Tyson, on TV and People magazine sexy lists. But we definitely should…!
July 8th, 2009 at 4:40 am
There’s Alice Roberts on British TV - a medical doctor with a PhD in palaeopathology, lectures on anatomy, organises the Cheltenham Science Festival and has appeared in or presented various sciencey programmes: Time Team, Coast, Extreme Archaeology, Don’t Die Young and most recently The Incredible Human Journey, a 5-parter about our migration out of Africa, where she got to travel to some pretty obscure parts of the world.
Here she talks generally about the importance of sciencehere she uses tubes and a balloon to demonstrate a male erection on her Don’t Die Young Series.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Nicholas, thanks! Alice Roberts looks to be exactly the sort of person I had in mind, but had never heard of. Excellent addition.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:57 am
How about the Fifth Element. She is not a scientist, but certainly that is science fiction.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Oops, got my URLs for Alice Roberts’s youtubes the wrong way round.
Also on British TV is Kate Humble. She isn’t a scientist herself (she says she was a bad student) but presents various sciencey programmes, such as the bi-annual Springwatch and Autumnwatch (three weeks each of mainly-live shows with cameras pointing at birds’ nests and investigation of deer rutting, migrations and urban foxes etc) and the Open University series Rough Science, where a bunch of real scientists are out in the wilds somewhere and have to do stuff like measure the speed of a glacier or build a working gramophone or distill something or other out of local materials and junk.
She’s also been to the bottom of the ocean to see a 6-gilled shark for TV, and travelled with an expedition to the Danakil desert, The Hottest Place on Earth, and more.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Mom, Lelu spent too much time in that movie babbling incoherently and kicking ass to come across as a science type. Sexy yes, though…
Nicholas, why is Britain doing better with this than the U.S.? Are Tyson, Kaku, and other male science types hogging the limelight?
July 9th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I don’t know why UK TV appears to have more female science presenters (I don’t know anything about US TV)… Maybe it is PC SOCIALISM in the UK!
Roberts and Humble do most (but not, I think, all) their work on the publicly-funded BBC (plus in Roberts’ case working also in the state-funded National Health Service and state-funded university system).
I don’t know if there is some built-in overall marginal preference by the public for male presenters on science, nature and technology programmes (maybe the audience is mostly male). If true it would presumably mean commercial channels would tend to hire men for a better audience. The BBC, while wanting its shows to get good audiences, isn’t especially required to maximise audience share at the expense of other goals.
But maybe public preference-for-male presenters is not true anyway, or even if it is it is not relevant in this case. I dunno (but nice bout of ifitisitis there).
Alice Roberts’s programmes (apart from the multi-presenter Coast) have been a tad more niche than Kate Humble’s; Humble’s Springwatch is pretty popular, including among kids, who get involved in all sorts of sub-projects, and she has had a cover or two of the listings magazine The Radio Times (founded in pre-TV 1923, but it does cover TV). Neither appear gurning in the papers or drunk at slebfests. They don’t crop up much in reality shows, though Roberts was in a cookery competition show and Humble is investigating her family background in the Beeb’s Who Do You Think You Are? genealogy programme (one grandfather, for instance, was WW2 Hawker test pilot).
July 10th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
If you are putting in Dax (Jadzia from the video, what about Ezri?) and Willow with mentions of 7 of 9 and “Belonna” (I assume you mean B’Elanna Torres, Voyager’s Chief Engineer?), the surely the following characters deserve nods (in order): Samantha Carter, Winifred Burkle, Kaylee Frye, Dr. Jennifer Keller, Dr. Elizabeth Weir (the second one, at least). Hollywood has a never-ending list, but it seems like those should make it if the first two/four do.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Rajib, I did think of Winifred. Keylee is more empirical engineer and was not written like a scientist. And frankly I don’t watch as many TV shows as I suspect you do! Maybe you’d like to submit a guest list of six more?
July 10th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I guess I’d put Kaylee in the same league as B’Elanna - they are both the engineer’s of their respective ships. The biggest difference, really, is that we got to see B’Elanna in about a factor of ten more episodes. But, you have complete veto power.
Of Star Trek characters, though, I’d have to go with Kathryn Janeway over any other Star Trek female character - she was actually writen to have a scientific background, and used it pretty often.
Even if I give up Kaylee, and Winifred (since you thought of her, but didn’t mention her - but she’s a physicist! With a published paper! What’s Willow got? Exactly.), the biggest omission was Sam, and fellow Stargate femmes (actually, I forgot two from that franchise - Drs. Janet Fraiser and Carolyn Lam - although they were only recurring characters).
Along the same vein as NCIS, you could put in all the female characters from the CSI franchise.
Depending on how much slack you are willing to give me, the female detectives from the Law & Order franchise might fit the bill too. Detective-work certainly requires a critical approach. But that may be getting away from science fiction.
I don’t suppose you want to give me Romy, the avatar of the Andromeda Ascendant?
What about Dr. Jean Grey?
July 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I was wondering why didnt you put Samantha Carter(Stargate SG1) and also Dr.Janet Frasier and Dr. Carolynn Lam(not on Carters level) also from the same show.
& the main one I think even Rajib managed to forget is River Tam, she is supposed to be a prodigy.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Because, Rana, I’ve never watched Stargate SG1. There are some gaps in my Fan credentials.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Yeah, I have to admit overlooking River. She suffers from the same problem as Kaylee of not having had enough character development in only half a season (though more in the movie, but still).
I am so not putting Inara on, though.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Inara has mastered the “science” of seduction, no?
Anyone else ever get bugged by people calling things science that aren’t?
July 20th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Great blog. Do you know of any relevant NLP forums or discussion groups?
August 4th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Here’s another one - former pop star and biochemist/Liz Bonnin from a new BBC series called Bang Goes The Theory, where a 4-person team explains a bunch of things, often by building them, with a studio look a bit like Tomorrow’s World meets Mythbusters.
It’s seems a bit aimed at hyperactive 12-yos, even though it is assocated with the Open University, but is quite fun. Last week one of the team (who has an aeronautics degree and does movie special effects) built a water-powered jet pack and hovered a few feet above a lake (however he did have to be connected to a high powered fire engine pump).