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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Interview with Tobias Buckell, Author of Sly Mongoose

October 24th, 2008

From Toby:

I’m Tobias S. Buckell. I was born in Grenada, and lived in parts of the Caribbean up through high school, moving to the US my senior year.

Sly Mongoose, my third novel, features a Venus-like planet where, due to Venus’s unique properties, entire cities can float in the air. Timas, a young man on one of the poorer floating cities, leads a life of being lowered into the crushing pressure and heat of the surface to help make a living. But it’s all, of course, about to get turned upside down

1) What was your inspiration for writing SLY MONGOOSE?

Partially it was a lecture that NASA scientist Geoff Landis gave about why Venus might be the next most habitable planet after Earth, as long as you were 100,000 feet above ground. That firmed the background up for me quickly. My characters, and the city of Yatapek, that are most influenced by the events of the novel, are inspired by the struggle working children face throughout the developed world, where hard choices are made and childhoods short.

2) What attracts you to science fiction?

I really am attracted to the big ideas, every since reading Childhood’s End. I love how epic SF is, spanning civilizations and worlds and how ideas sustain, or destroy them. I’m also in love with strange new worlds, getting to explore and be taken somewhere new.

3) What sort of research did you do to write this book?

I’m lucky in that the afore-mentioned Geoff Landis had done the idea generation behind the Venus-like world. He actually helped me out by giving me notes and CDs with information on them about Venus research that allowed me to skip the data-gathering section and jump right into the plotting.

4) Do you feel it’s important to get the science right in your work?

For me it depends on the story at hand. Sometimes realism gets in the way of a good story. I remember William Gibson noting that if he’d paid attention to the computer scientists at the time he wrote Neuromancer, he would have been talking out of the idea of cyberspace, as the bandwidth just didn’t look like it could support the idea.

What I like to do is use the science as the seed, during the research phase of the books. My concept of ‘lamina’ in Ragamuffin, which lies in the background of Sly Mongoose, comes from my reading about Augmented Reality, which is just a super-keen field of research. However I used it to solve the problem of AI/environment interaction for the novel, and whether that has a solid basis in science is debatable, it just sounded really good.

5) Does this book have a theme or message you’re trying to impart? How does that interact with events in the world at large today?

Part of it is a play on looking at the weaknesses of democracy, as perceived by those who get frustrated by it’s inability to move quickly and give everyone what they want. It’s a compromise system, so
people are inherently always in a state of unfulfillment, which is good. To some that is a sign it isn’t working, but I don’t believe that to be the case. But it can be dangerous to a democracy, the desire to have someone solve all their problems quickly leads often to it’s dissolution (Athenians voted in tyrants willingly out of a desire to get things done due to impending invasion). But, Democracy also, actually, can take too long to get things done. It was fun to explore.

6) Who are your favorite authors and books now and when you were growing up?

I liked Arthur C. Clarke a great deal, and Asimov’s juveniles could be fun. In high school I went for the cyberpunks, particularly Sterling, as he set a lot of his stuff throughout the developing world, which had a big impact on making me feel that SF had a bigger tent than I’d felt it had before.

7) What are you writing now?

I’m currently in a post novel ennui phase, where I’m working on some outlines, doing research, and letting things bump around in my head abit before moving forward. I expect some short stories to get written here in the next couple weeks.

8 ) Did you always want to write? Or did you stumble into it?How did you get where you are now?

I’ve always been interested in words and reading. My mother had me reading extraordinarily young, and used to have me sit down with a matchbox of words that I’d use to make sentences with in lieu of a babysitter. It was early training.

But to be honest, I figured I’d work on boats like the rest of my family currently does. I really fell into writing when teachers started taking away my books in 8th grade, when it stopped being ‘cute’ that I didn’t play along in class but enjoyed reading more. After a few years, I started writing stories on paper because it ‘looked’ like I was taking notes and deflected attention.

Because I’d soaked up so much from reading several books a day (I’m a fast reader) I realized it was something I enjoyed, and I started to pursue seriously in high school.

9) What does a typical writing day look like for you? How long do you write, that sort of thing?

I freelance fulltime. I usually get moving between 10-11am and hit the gym nowadays. I shower up and eat lunch with a friend or family member, and then usually do a couple chores/errands/answer email/read internet/mail etc until mid afternoon. From 2pm-6pm I usually do freelance work and blogging and consulting, my non-fiction side of life. I then spend the evenings with my wife. Once she’s asleep and we’ve hung out for the evening, I head into my office again at midnight, maybe earlier if I have a burning project, and begin work. How long I work is dependent on my enthusiasm or the deadline. 12-4 is my usual shift. On very busy deadlines or inspired nights, I’ll go 12-7am, when my wife’s waking up and the dogs playing breaks my concentration, and I go to bed.

10) Is there anything you especially like to work on in a book? Anything you hate?

Like many authors the ‘middle muddle’ gets to me. About halfway through the book, I’ve spent so much time on the outline, the idea, and the details that the book has lost any newness or originality for me, and I start to despair of what made me fall in love with it in the first place. From the middle to about three quarters I always feel like I’m underwater, but when I hit that magic 3/4 section, the book’s end is in sight, and a sprint to the end ensues that is exhilarating.

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