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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
Monday Starlinks and some Extended Commentary
October 6th, 2008
Last week I wrote a post about Charlie Stross’s hyperbolic assertion that it’s become “impossible” to write near-future science fiction. He posted some additional explanatory comments there, and also posted an additional explanation on his blog. He basically redefines “near-future sf” to be something different from sf set n years into the future. Well, I don’t agree. No one can even agree on what science fiction is, but near-future isn’t so ambiguous an adjective to me. It’s science fiction set in the near future. Stross can make up his own, more descriptive term. I’m not giving him “near-future” so easily. His definition is nuanced and apparently arbitrary about the time, and poor in that it can apply to science fiction set in all sorts of eras apparently, and to all sorts of science fiction. Oh well. At least he’s thoughtful and struggling, which is what makes an artist.
Forget time travel kill Hitler before he caused too much trouble. Join the discussion at tor.com about time travel to take positive actions without killing anyone. There’s a rule of unintended consequences at work here, like the devil or djinn cheating on the wishes granted. My choice would be to give the scientific method to the greeks, and everyone else, too. I don’t know it would have helped then and there, but that’s my bias.
Human evolution is over. But not for the well-reasoned reasons put forth by a leading geneticist. Another stupid smart person, unfortunately, who can’t see the forest for the trees. The argument is that there are fewer older fathers, fewer mutations, and less evolution. What?! How about the effects of contraception? Of genetic screening? Of impending genetic manipulation? If our technology continues apace, or anything close to it, we’ll be directing our own evolution — and it won’t technically be evolution anymore, at least as any sort of natural process. Unless we outlaw such technology. But that won’t stick, not everywhere. And then it will be compete or lose, and history is written by the winners, baby.
Major Bolide Forecast: No Damage Expected. Cool. We can predict when rocks fall from the sky now. That should be a superpower or something.
No naked black holes. Damn. They may not be the sexiest topic in science or science fiction if this sort of bad news keeps up. Basically, it’s an argument based on numerical simulation that black holes retain their event horizons even in extreme events like violent mergers.
Galaxy Diversity and Clues to Cosmic Evolution. Cool but vague story about a big Hubble Space Telescope investigation. This is the kind of large, detailed project that brings dividends for years to come as the rich data is sifted through.
Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy discusses the discovery of a planet denser than lead. This is really, really cool. Planets out there really are exceptionally diverse.
An older story, but one I was pointed at today by a friend: Man who stuck his head in a particle accelerator. You can’t get data like this on purpose.
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October 7th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Mike,
Regarding human evolution,there is more to Jones’ argument (even as briefly reported in the article you link to) than the paucity of older fathers. He also cites several conditions for evolution by natural selection to occur that no longer exist for modern humans (high death rate before child bearing age, small isolated populations). Do you agree with Jones that the conditions for evolution by natural selection do not currently exist for the human species? You call his argument “well reasoned”, so it seems you do. But you predict evolution by technological intervention in the human genome. You also recognize that such technological intervention might not be properly called evolution. I don’t think there is enough description of Jones’ claims for him to deserve the “stupid smart person” appellation. He might fully agree with your observations.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Perhaps, Dan. But it’s kind of like this quote I like: “Virtually all scientists have the bad habit of displaying feats of virtuosity in problems in which they can make some progress and leave until the end the really difficult central problems.”
– Malcolm Longair
He attacks the problem with his tool set, but his tool set probably doesn’t apply to the problem in reality. We might agree on a lot of things, indeed, but I’d still point at his work and ask him, “Why bother with that? It isn’t going to apply.”
I probably like to use/abuse the term “stupid smart people” too much, too.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
My personal definition of near-future SF (which I admit isn’t universal or even right), is everything under a thousand years from now. The middle ground is from a thousand years to a million years. Everything over a millions years is far future stuff.