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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
Slamming Starlinks: The LHC and the Election
September 10th, 2008
Slamming together hadrons, that is. The Large Hadron Collider is now operational and tested, although it will be months for things to really ramp up and for us to start hearing about the results of the higher energy experiments. Watch one of the chambers under construction (six years of timelapse!):
Tor.com also has a couple of interesting articles about doomsday reactions and the strange concern that physicists don’t read enough science fiction.
(Batgirl has a dirty, filthy mouth. More from tor.com. An aside, but I can’t leave it out.)
And speaking of collisions, watching the election proceedings from another country has me reflecting on how Americans can be so stupid and easily manipulated. I’ve had some distant friends send me email about how Obama is a muslim, for instance, with suggestions I forward the ridiculous lies to even more people. So while in Switzerland, some superlative and dedicated minds are slamming together protons for the greater good, we have an ignorant culture in the US slamming each other with pig’s lipstick. I came across this amazon list of books on the anti-intellectual culture that has emerged. I’ve read several of them and found them very good, if disturbing. I’ve considered writing my own take from the perspective of a science educator, but I haven’t figured out what to do about it. A segment of the population seems willfully ignorant and revels in their lack of thought, and the proposed solutions seem insufficient. Grr.
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September 11th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Never put lipstick on a pig. It wastes your time and anoys the pig.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Never try to teach a pig to sing, was the way my t-shirt said it. But sometimes I want to try, because I had an uncle who was a pig farmer, and I’ve learned to sing better with Rockband, so we just need to get Xboxes onto the pig farms and the country is set!
September 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
While reviewing Gallup’s site this morning, I was absolutely astounded by the percentage of Americans that feel Republicans are the party more likely to keep them safe, and more likely to rescue the economy - if there’s ANYTHING the republican party has done in the past 8 years it’s to have made America less safe and flush the economy down the crapper. Yet people still broadly feel that these are republican strengths and may even put them back into the White House because of them. Blows my mind.
Nice site, btw.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Thanks, James. There are some traditional Republican values I can get behind, like fiscal responsibility and State’s Rights (when it’s issues broadening rather than restricting freedoms). Unfortunately, the current crop doesn’t do that. And the less safe we feel, the better they do in the polls, so why even worry about bin laden? Blows my mind, too.
I try to stick with the science and science fiction, but there are times when I feel like the politics are fair game because we’re living in 1984.