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
A couple of years ago, following the initial Kepler data release, I thought the numbers indicated it was at least 1/100, and likely much higher. Better statistics/analysis seem to indicate a number like 1/5: “What this means is, when you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>We’ve just had a major announcement concerning first results from NASA’s Kepler Mission. Before providing links to the details and reactions to the details, let me describe what the mission does and what it will continue to do. Kepler is basically just a big digital camera in space that takes pictures of a field of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>I’m teaching the last week of my astronomy class, and the last topic I’m covering is exoplanets: how we find them and their properties as we currently understand them. The textbook I’m using is brand new, Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson, and covers some aspects of this hot subtopic pretty well, but it […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>It seems that massive Earth-like planets exist in other star systems, rocky bodies with masses several times higher than that of the Earth. Some scientists are trying to understand the geological structure, volcanism, outgassing, and plate tectonics. This is probably more detail than you might need to write a story, but thinking about these details […]
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