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 overslept and almost missed it yesterday! The traveling, stress, and lack of sufficient sleep caught up to me. I made it over okay, with a couple of minutes to spare. I wanted to make some adjustments to the slides and practice the talk again just before the actual event, but didn’t have time. The […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>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 »>A few weeks ago I mentioned I’d been asked to participate in a press conference regarding my research at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. Well, that happens Monday morning. I’ll be posting the press release here to coincide with the press conference and will post about my experience afterwards. I’m hoping it […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>Yesterday I was going through the mail I’d missed while I’ve been traveling, and came across the official letter finally that I am being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure on July 1, 2008, the start of our fiscal year. Woo hoo! So I knew this was happening. My department and department chair all supported […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>My mother is reading Spider Star and liking it significantly more than Star Dragon, primarily because she feels more for the characters. She hasn’t finished the book yet, but did tell me on the phone the other day that she’d noticed an error. Not a typo, but an outright mistake. She claimed I’d gotten the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Writers have to have thick skins to reach success. Rejection and criticism are a daily experience, even after being professionally published. On a good day, it isn’t a big deal. On a bad day, it’s depressing. One of the reasons that some writers achieve success is because there are things to be learned from the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>I had excellent sushi for lunch/breakfast, then spent the day at the beach in Impanema sipping drinks from a coconut enjoying totally perfect weather here in Rio. Comparing this to mountain life in Wyoming, I can only conclude I’m no longer on the same planet. I am not sure I have ever seen a girl in […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »>I wanted to talk about what the experience feels like while it’s fresh. There were nine of us sitting for 2.5 days in a board room at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), with a panel chair, plus two support staff from the institute to help with technical issues/questions. We also had various observers come […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »>I have a little time before I have to catch a taxi to the airport, and I will get some things down while they are fresh. First, my primary reason to do this review this year was that the proposals were for a post-repair mission refurbished and repaired Hubble Space Telescope. This involves repairing not […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>I want to talk a little bit about the dark side of academic sociology, a dark side that does have a silver lining. This situation I will describe may be obvious to some of you reading, and a complete surprise to others. For those to whom it’s obvious, perhaps I’ll still have some subtle insights […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>At the risk of making some overly general statements based on my own personal experiences, I wanted to put down some thoughts about how the approach toward science — at least astronomy — seems to differ between the U.S. and Europe. I’m hip deep, or maybe neck deep, in Hubble Space Telescope proposals in preparation […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>One of the questions I’ve gotten as an astronomer with science fiction sensibilities more than a few times is about how nebulas would appear if we were in one. Phil Plait, the “Bad Astronomer,” has considered this issue and made a video about how to think about the issue: So, nebulas look cool through a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>