Most Popular Posts
Search
-
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
Scorching Starlinks
October 23rd, 2008
More on superhero politics.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just gave out 104 research grants to pursue global health projects. The $100k is not very much to fund a research program, but they plan to follow up with million dollar grants to the ones that show the most promise after a year. I like this basic approach very much, but I think a year is pretty short and think a couple of years would be a wiser initial evaluation period, with double the initial funding. That’s a quibble. I love Gates using his money like this.
An article about the science behind the Fox TV show The Fringe. The article makes it sound interesting and well researched, but I haven’t seen the show. A little poking around the net indicates that a lot of people think the science on the show is dumb and needs to be called “science.”
Scientists erase specific memories in mice. Cool. I had tech like this in my first novel, Star Dragon. Also recall The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Now you can get away with molesting mice over and over and them not being able to testify against you…yeah, I can be creepy.
India goes to the moon. Now maybe astronauts can have a nice curry instead of that freeze-dried ice cream.
42blips.com is a website that tracks popular science fiction blogs.
My buddy Andy Duncan’s story Grand Guignol is available as an audio file from Podcastle, in time for Halloween. I fondly remember reading the first draft of this story back at Clarion West years ago where we were class mates. I’m a hard sf guy, but I appreciate fantasy and superlative writing, and Andy is a master.
I leave you with Japanese fighting robots:
Related Posts
Related Posts
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
<
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 am
Fringe is horribly weak sci-fi. Think X-Files. With a whacked out Denethor as the smartest guy in the room.
I gave it a chance, was nowhere near impressed.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for the report. I won’t worry about it too much.