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 was giving an astronomy talk at a Worldcon a few years back and was showing some pictures of some spiral galaxies like this Hubble image of M81: Someone in the audience asked if the spiral shape of hurricanes and galaxies were for the same reason. Here’s a picture of Hurricane Floyd from NASA (who […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>I like stories of all types, not just hard science fiction. I can get excited about a good fantasy, or a good story of any kind. What I can’t stand, however, is the pretending. Crap pretending to be science, making it harder to find the real thing, and making it harder for the public to […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>That’s the topic for my class this week, and I just wanted to share a brief introduction with some links to some interesting videos and history regarding nanotech. Let’s start with NASA Kid’s introduction to nanotechnology. Then there’s a nice, more adult introduction with a summary of current nano state of the art. Historically, the […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 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 »>Grrrr!!! No one better tell me about how science reporting is good and I’m being unfair. I dare you. I double dog dare you. My research specialty is quasars. I love quasars. I’m a world expert, and I know more than anyone you know about them, and also what we don’t yet know about them. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »>A comment on my Standing on the Ledge with Jumper post got me thinking about this issue today. I realized that to a great degree my disagreement with others concerns the definition of teleportation, and how I think that the standard has slipped for PR purposes. I think at one extreme every can agree on […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »>It’s one of the proposal seasons in astronomy this month. There have been deadlines for applications to use the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and a dozen other ground-based telescopes (e.g., NASA’s IRTF, NOAO’s telescopes at Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo, etc.). I also just got my CD filled with Hubble Space Telescope […]
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »>Seth Shostak over at space.com has a nice article today mostly about why aliens won’t visit the Earth. I agree with the vast majority of his assessments, and the one reason he proposes that they would. As he points out, most “aliens coming to Earth” stories (at least on TV and in the movies) are […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>Last summer at the Launch Pad workshop, I brougt in my main reference bookshelf for writing space-based hard science fiction. This list is by no means complete (I have books stashed everywhere and loaned out and whatever…who knows where they all end up?) . Here are the results: Bennett, Jeffrey O., and G. Seth Shostak. […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »>As a professional astronomer with a faculty job as a professor at the University of Wyoming, I find it very common that people outside of academia don’t really understand what it is I “do.” A lot of misconceptions floating around there, so let me knock some down first before building something in their place. First […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>Why do people read science fiction, and why do people write it? And in a related question, why do some look down on it or feel ashamed to admit to loving it? The answers I feel lie in what science fiction does that other forms of fiction don’t do as well. Here’s what I think […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »>“A dark-matter world holds the key to a weapon from the heart of a sun.” That’s the tagline on the cover. My new hard science fiction novel, Spider Star, was published by Tor this week. I’m pretty happy to finally have the book out, the current expression of my attempts to make my career in […]
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »>