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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
Adam Lambert and the Sneak Attack of Science Fiction
November 30th, 2009
Adam Lambert of American Idol fame ruffled some feathers at the American Music Awards recently by kissing one of the (male, OMG!) dancers performing with him during his appearance. It’s in the embedded video, a little past half-way through. I missed it the first time I watched it. Noticing the quick cutaway helps spot it:
It was fun and titillating when Madonna was kissing Brittney and Christina during live music performances a few years ago, at least from the commentary I saw, and lesbian kisses have become pretty standard fare on TV shows. Adam Lambert is apparently a huge controversy and uptight socially conservative people are whining. We definitely have a double standard, and it should be clear that this is cultural and religious, not something inherent in human behavior. In a number of historical cultures, homosexuality and bisexuality were much more common than today. It’s a learned response. And our culture is still quite discriminatory at the present time.
When you approach one of these controversies head on, as Adam Lambert did, you take shit for it. There’s a a time when it becomes appropriate to do it, and I hope we are at such a time, but it distracts from Lambert’s music, and probably cost him his chance at being the American Idol last year. It’ll cost him some record sales, too. Remember all the closeted gay performers? Freddie Mercury of Queen (an obvious hint?!) comes to mind immediately, as well as dozens of other musicians and actors who have produced some of the greatest artistic works in recent years.
Because people don’t like the gays. Or the blacks. Or the muslims. Or whoever. At least they don’t like them when they step out into the open. In every culture there’s some segment of the population that are the outcasts.
This is an issue in fiction as well as music. I remember arguing in a critique group in the early 1990s that making a character gay in a short story probably shouldn’t be done, unless that was an essential point to the story. I didn’t argue this point because I was a bigot or a homophobe, but simply because many potential readers would get hung up on that point to such an extent it would impact how they read the story. Of course, it’s always something a skilled writer can get away with (e.g., Joe Haldeman’s fine short story “Feedback” that was first published in Playboy around that same time), but why risk it, unless you’re politically motivated? It isn’t the artist’s duty to fight for every cause out there, just their own.
Science fiction, however, has some obvious ways to be sneaky here.
On the original Star Trek series they had several episodes that dealt with racism (e.g., the one with the planet full of people black on one side and white on the other — or vice versa). Politically repressed societies such as the Soviet Union had writers who could criticize their government only through indirect means such as fiction, and especially science fiction. Joe Haldeman, again, in his novel The Forever War, had a future full of homosexuals. It has a shock effect on me as a kid not much exposed to such things, and by portraying this society in the distant future it was not directly threatening.
Anyway, I do feel that the time is right to have overtly gay characters in fiction without it being a central issue. The tipping point is about here. It might still be a little early, but it might be a few years late for many audiences. Let the bigots start feeling that they’re in the minority.
The science fiction community is generally very inclusive. The social conservatives, if anyone, seem to be held in scorn at conventions, and while there is “right wing” science fiction, it seems to be in the minority. Exploring the future and aliens and issues from novel perspectives seems to be, predominantly, a liberal thing to do. At least playing honest with such viewpoints.
Anyway, science fiction is always an appropriate way of approaching these issues whether the times and audiences call for stealth, or not. Making Starbuck a woman on the Battlestar Galactica reboot was brilliant. Women’s issues are not as pressing as they were a few decades ago, but showing a kickass female fighter pilot doesn’t hurt. You still can’t do it for our existing U.S. military (or an overtly gay one), but you can in science fiction.
There is a segment of the population who are not reflective, who do not realize that some things that seem clearly right or wrong to them are culturally determined. Science fiction is a sneak attack that can get people to look at these issues from a new perspective. That’s a unique power, one that we should appreciate and wield when we’re so moved.
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December 2nd, 2009 at 3:48 am
LOL. The ‘lesbians good/homos bad’ thing has been going on for quite some time: in college (70s) I took a human sexuality course that included a 24 hour immersion session in ‘porn’ called the “sexual attitude re-evaluation” (SAR) session. Films, slides, audio tapes, group discussion, repeat for a whole day. The audience salivated over the chicks getting it on flicks and the auditorium emptied out of most of its male viewers during the guys getting it on flicks. (Literally “hubba hubba hubba” vs “ewwww, that makes me sick!”)
Not a single one of them could explain their reaction in any kind of meaningful way during discussions. VERY deeply embedded in the culture, to the point that it is almost entirely unexamined.
Haldeman, yes. Heinlein in Time Enough For Love also (characters not caring what “sex” their potential partners were) and even further back - Farmer’s The Lovers (interspecies metaphor).
The only issue I really have with your point is: no point should be made at all regarding the sex, orientation, recreational habits, etc of individual characters. Is ‘Phelon’ an interesting character? If so, does it matter what sex Phelon was born or chooses to express as now? Do the same questions matter regarding Phelon’s partners? (That is, unless details of which organ goes where are important to the story.)
I’m not saying get rid of sexual things in SF stories, I’m suggesting that if all stigma and various cultural sensitivities were removed from the equation (in the far, far future when we’ve all grown up a bit more), such details will be as unimportant (and unnecessary) as worrying about what particular vegetables are on the plate during a meal mentioned in passing. (Oh noes! They’re eating french cut green beans! That reveals so much bad about their overall character and lack of moral up bringing that I must burn this story and write to my congressman! Better yet, skip all of that and burn the writer!)
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I guess one point is, Steve, that if you’re trying to write a piece with one purpose, throwing in at random a culturally controversial element may well derail the main purpose of the story for many readers. The writer should be aware of that.
I was not too surprised, and a little amused, to see the movie version of David Gerrold’s autobiographical THE MARTIAN CHILD suddenly spring up with a heterosexual father and a love interest. The fact that Gerrold is homosexual would have distracted mainstream audiences from the important story there. Unfortunately. And those elements in fine book THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF probably hurt its sales and award prospects.
Now, if you want to tackle the culturally controversial element, science fiction provides ways to do that without setting off the automatic cultural reaction and perhaps permitting people to develop a new perspective about it down the line.