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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"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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I sometimes feel the need to balance criticism with praise. Just not necessarily at the same time or for the same things. Some people reading my blog for the first time because they saw my post about Michael Crichton may think I’m a Comic Book Guy type who hates, or is at least critical of, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »>Earlier this week, award-winning sf writer Nancy Kress (who is attending Launch Pad next week, by the way) wrote a short post about “the point of fiction.” I agree with her that a primary point is indeed “to decide what matters.” Last night, I was starting to reread Robert McKee’s excellent book, Story: Substance, Structure, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I’m ahead of the curve on science topics, usually, a bit behind on technology. At least compared to some of my very tech-savvy friends whom I talk with. I’m starting to catch up, a little. As an experiment, I have made an MP3 format recording of myself reading one of my shorter short stories, “The […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I go back and forth on this issue. I’m generally skeptical, but every once in a while I come across something that looks like real evidence. Recent radar reports requested under the Freedom of Information Act might qualify. What’s hard about this stuff, assuming there is anything to any of it in the first place, […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>Scientific American interviews a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience, Paul Zehr, about the realities of being the Batman. Too many people think the hard part of being Batman is getting the billions of dollars to buy all the toys. Hardly. The physical conditioning, training, and recovery are much more stringent and more limiting to the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Here’s the brief article quoting Buzz Aldrin: I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today. All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It’s not realistic…if you […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »>There are a number of writers of SF — I’ll briefly consider “speculative fiction” in general before turning to science fiction specifically — who have never written genre fiction. That is, at least as far as the publishers and bookstores are concerned. Some of these fall into the nebulous area of “literature” in which snooty […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 60 Comments »>In light of the recent posts about the red M stars, as red as they’re perceived to be anyway, I wanted to bring up the issue of the non existence of green stars. A star with the appropriate temperature, not too dissimilar from that of our own Sun, has a spectrum that peaks in the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »>FOR RELEASE: 9:30 AM Central Daylight Time, June 2, 2008 HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SPIES GALAXY/BLACK HOLE EVOLUTION IN ACTION A set of twenty-nine Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of an exotic type of active galaxy known as a “post-starburst quasar” show that interactions and mergers drive both galaxy evolution and the growth of super-massive black […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »>I generally only censor spam or super obnoxious posts from my blog, and luckily haven’t had any in the second category (knock on plastic). I’m in turns bemused and annoyed with comments on some entries, like this one, about the antiscience propoganda piece that is Expelled. I know I’m going to be preaching to the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I was thinking today about the “Reals” of the Heroes Network and what superpowers are now within the reach of our science and technology. Most superpowers are ridiculously unphysical, as described in the really fun book, Physics of Superheroes, which the author James Kakalios fashioned after a class he teaches at the University of Minnesota. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 107 Comments »>I’ve refereed a couple of papers recently, and had several papers refereed, with a variety of results that has had me thinking a lot about peer review lately. I personally know the chief editors of a couple of the leading journals in astronomy and have had the chance to discuss the job with them one-on-on […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>