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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Launch Pad Summary and Worldcon So Far

August 8th, 2008

Launch Pad

I have to admit I’ve been a walking zombie the past two days, at least some of the time. I didn’t get enough sleep at Launch Pad (see summaries by Alma Alexander, Mary Robinette Kowal, David Levine as well — other bloggers include Nancy Kress, Jay Lake, Cherryl Floyd Miller, David Marusek, and Deanna Hoak). The panel on Wednesday about Launch Pad went very well and it seems like I’m much more famous here at the con for the workshop than I am for my science fiction novels. Well, it can’t hurt sales and should help some in the long run, even if that’s not my main claim to fame in the sf community at the end of the day.

I’ve got to get with my friend and Launch Pad co-founder Jim Verley about the final participant evaluations. It’s clear that it was a big hit again overall, but I’d like to do some detailed planning for next year and secure a guest instructor/dates for 2009.

Worldcon

I had two panels on Thursday and moderated both of them. I will do longer, separate posts inspired by each in addition to the brief summaries below.

Global Warming — Or Maybe Not? I knew this would be a contentious panel/discussion and I was right. I’m also afraid I was some combination over offensive/defensive since there is a lot of crap being thrown around concerning the topic. I’m an advocate for science, and science has been unfairly smeared by some global warming deniers and bad science journalists. Too much ignorance and misconceptions here. There are a lot of things concerning this topic that any educated person should be able to agree on, but the political biases seem to keep even the facts out in some areas. The science should be taken at face value, with a continuing scrutiny within the scientific community and a proper weighting given the uncertainties, as our best information about what’s happening and what’s going to happen. With that information as given (and being constantly re-evaluated), then policy should be made. Too often we have badly biased politicians, business people, and others who want to discredit the science even though few have enough understanding to do so. There’s plenty of room to argue about the quantitative details of our understanding, but the basics are quite clear: we’ve been in a decades long warming trend that may have briefly stalled, the greenhouse effect already warms the Earth and a significant source of some of the temperature increases is likely from increases in CO2 that can be directly tied to the burning of fossil fuels, and we should take the issue seriously.

Unique Astronomical Environments: Living in Extreme Places. This was fun and not contentious at all, but strangely I missed the juice of the previous panel. Basically we talked about all the cool places you could set a story and some of the issues about living there — either for humans or for aliens.

I managed to buy an expensive pair of shorts at Niketown and ran five miles this morning. Ugh. I’ve lost another step. Couldn’t manage a nine-minute mile pace. I know I can get back there, but the time off with the Achille’s injury and Launch Pad/Worldcon eating out bonanza aren’t helping.

Upcoming for Today: A reading at 4 PM which will be from Spider Star, and Match Game SF this evening (I’ll be subbing in for Jay Lake). Tomorrow morning I’m moderating a panel on Dark Matter at 10 AM and afterwards will be autographing at 11:30 AM.

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