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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Professors have it easy?
December 13th, 2004
Actually, no we don’t. I sometimes hear people say, or see them write in an online forum, that university professors have it easy. They say that we get a job for life and only have to teach a class or two at a time and, gee, isn’t that easy?
Hardly. I haven’t posted here in about six weeks because my original intent was to make longer, thoughtful posts about things going on in my life and the world I’m interested in. I haven’t had the time. I’m going to try to post interesting, thoughtful things but perhaps always not so long.
After Milehicon, I’ve been observing at WIRO (our local observatory), written a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation, reviewed about 50 proposals to NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), flown to Orlando for the IRTF review meeting, hit Universal Studios and Epcot Center with my wife for a breif vacation, gotten sick, advised a dozen students about their courses, mentored 3 students in their research, written peer teaching evaluations for three other professors, and, oh yeah, taught a graduate level course on galaxies and cosmology. No one just teaches a grad level course without a lot of preparation. Lots of late nights, but things got done, mostly, at a level I was satisfied with.
Except the blog.
Anyway, in coming weeks, expect to hear about an anthology I’ve proposed to the National Science Foundation to support introductory astronomy, the release of Star Dragon in paperback and as an e-book (available for free from the website here), my plans for teaching astrobiology in the future, and more. My next big event will be the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego the second week of January. I’ll be presenting a paper on the astronomy anthology, and Greg Benford will be speaking, both in support of a special session “Astronomy and the Humanities” organized by Andrew Fraknoi. The paperback will be out, too, and I’m trying to line up an event at Mysterious Galaxy.
Finally, I’ll try to post about the novel writing process. I got my revision instructions from my editor at Tor for the new book, and it’s going to be a fair amount of work yet. That’s okay — I expected to do some work, and I trust my editor. The book will improve significantly before it’s published.
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