Star Dragon

Star Dragon
by Mike Brotherton

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About Book

From Publishers Weekly
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. The thinly characterized crew of the Karamojo has been hand-picked to travel 250 light years to SS Cygni, a binary star system, to capture a star dragon, an exotic creature seemingly comprised of stellar plasma and magnetic fields. Despite her "striking" good looks, Capt. Lena Fang is all business, only revealing her "feminine" side in the "timelessly girlish" trappings of her private quarters, and in her dealings with the ship's AI, modeled on a decidedly soft-hearted vision of Hemingway. In contrast, exobiologist Dr. Samuel Fisher and biosystems engineer Axelrod Henderson are both uptight and ruthlessly focused on their work. Fisher's manipulative sexual relationship with Fang threatens the crew's ability to work together, while Henderson secretly plots to release a virus that will impregnate every female on Earth with his offspring. When they eventually reach SS Cygni, the star dragons prove surprisingly sneaky. Brotherton's strength is in the technical rigor of his setting, with truly alien creatures and biomods that can alter the human body into the most exotic of life forms. Readers willing to overlook the less-than-convincing characters will find an amazingly detailed world and a story full of scientific wonder.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* A probe launched in the late twenty-first century to the classic dwarf nova system SS Cygni has sent back hours of video, including a few minutes that show a serpentine form not only twisting lazily but also turning in a purposive way suggestive of intelligence. The Biolathe Corporation is sending a spaceship to study the dragonlike form, determine whether it is of natural or artificial origin, and, perhaps, return with a specimen. The round-trip voyage will take about three years of the crew's subjective time; meanwhile, 500 years will have passed on Earth. Eagerly joining the crew of three men and two women, exobiologist Sam Fisher becomes ever more obsessed with what he considers his dragon. Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence (in the form of the ship's brain, which is modeled on Ernest Hemingway), bioscience, and other things. Just as important to the plot are the dynamics and interactions of the very well developed characters, each of whom has personal reasons for making the long journey. 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. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
The SS Cygni probe sent back hours of video, captured by the Biolathe AI, but only a few minutes mattered--the four minutes that showed a creature made of fire, living , moving, dancing in the plasma fire of the double star's accretion disk. A dragon made of star stuff, so alien that only a human expedition to observe and perhaps capture it, could truly understand them.It's a perilous journey into the future, however, for SS Cygni is 245 light- years from Earth, and even though only two years' subjective time will pass on board the Karamojo, the crew will return to an Earth where five hundred years have passed. Captain Lena Fang doesn't care--she has made her life on her ship, where her best friend is the ship's AI. Samuel Fisher, the contract exobiologist,doesn't care, either. He is making the voyage of a lifetime and in the small world of the Karamojo he will have to live with the consequences of his obsessive quest for knowledge. The rest of the small crew--Axel Henderson, the biosystems engineer; Sylvia Devereaux, the beautiful physical sciences expert; and Phil Stearn, the ship's jack-of-all-trades--have their own reasons for saying good-bye to everyone they have ever known. As the Biolathe AI said, uncertain five hundred- year round trips don't attract the most stable personalities, but somehow they'll have to learn to get along with each other, if they're to catch their dragon and come home again.For at the end of the journey is the star dragon--a creature of fire with a nuclear furnace for heart. The crew of the Karamojo--human and AI alike--will risk everything to capture it, and it will take all their technology, all their skill, and more courage than they knew they had, to come home alive.

Inside Flap Copy
The SS Cygni probe sent back hours of video, captured by the Biolathe AI, but only a few minutes mattered--the four minutes that showed a creature made of fire, living , moving, dancing in the plasma fire of the double star's accretion disk. A dragon made of star stuff, so alien that only a human expedition to observe and perhaps capture it, could truly understand them.

It's a perilous journey into the future, however, for SS Cygni is 245 light- years from Earth, and even though only two years' subjective time will pass on board the Karamojo, the crew will return to an Earth where five hundred years have passed. Captain Lena Fang doesn't care--she has made her life on her ship, where her best friend is the ship's AI. Samuel Fisher, the contract exobiologist,doesn't care, either. He is making the voyage of a lifetime and in the small world of the Karamojo he will have to live with the consequences of his obsessive quest for knowledge. The rest of the small crew--Axel Henderson, the biosystems engineer; Sylvia Devereaux, the beautiful physical sciences expert; and Phil Stearn, the ship's jack-of-all-trades--have their own reasons for saying good-bye to everyone they have ever known. As the Biolathe AI said, uncertain five hundred- year round trips don't attract the most stable personalities, but somehow they'll have to learn to get along with each other, if they're to catch their dragon and come home again.

For at the end of the journey is the star dragon--a creature of fire with a nuclear furnace for heart. The crew of the Karamojo--human and AI alike--will risk everything to capture it, and it will take all their technology, all their skill, and more courage than they knew they had, to come home alive.

About the Author

Mike Brotherton grew up in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He earned a Ph. D. in astronomy in 1996 from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in observational studies of quasars. After research positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Kitt Peak National Observatory, he assumed a faculty position at the University of Wyoming in 2002. He is the author of nearly fifty scientific articles in refereed journals and regularly uses the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico in the course of his research.

He is a graduate of the Clarion West writing workshop and a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. His short stories have appeared in anthologies including In the Shadow of the Wall, and to magazines such as Tales of the Unanticipated and Talebones. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, with his wife, Leah Cutter, also a novelist, and his fierce cat, Sita.

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