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Star Dragon
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.
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.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
50 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
About the author
Mike Brotherton
12 books12 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Mike Brotherton writes hard science-fiction stories with well developed characters.
For a living, Mike is an observational astronomer, researching quasars and active galactic nuclei.
Combining his interest in science fiction writing and astronomy, Mike organizes the yearly Launch Pad workshop, which teaches astronomy to writers of science fiction and fantasy.
About Mike
ASTRONOMY:
When I was six, I wanted to be an astronomer or a paleontologist. When I was twelve I wanted to be a science fiction writer. I went to college at Rice University intending to get a degree in electrical engineering and work for JPL or NASA. I ended up double majoring in EE and space physics and went on to the University of Texas at Austin to study astronomy. After getting my PhD in 1996, I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Kitt Peak National Observatory. I am now an assistant professor in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming. My specialty is quasars. I’ve actually used the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Keck Telescope and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. You can find out more here .
WRITING:
Writing starts with reading. I don’t remember learning to read and don’t remember ever having difficulty with reading with one exception in the form of a nasty school librarian who told me in first grade that I “didn’t read that book.” You see, I’d taken a book from the “big stacks” and first graders weren’t supposed to be able to read those. Bitch. I started writing my first novel — something really terrible inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars books — in sixth grade. For the most part I let the writing bug idle until I was in college. I got to write a short story for a Space Colonies course my freshmen year, then did some writing on my own and also for an advanced fiction writing course my junior year. I didn’t sell anything I wrote in college but I did start learning to be professional and submitting my stories. Graduate school slowed me down for a few years but I did join a local SF/F writing group (”The Slugtribe”) and started getting serious about writing. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in the summer of 1994.
Clarion West was a wonderful experience for me though not everyone fares so well. It’s basically boot camp for writers for six weeks, writing 5-6 stories, reading and critiquing over 100 stories, living and learning intensely. I’m still in contact with many of my classmates now nearly a decade later and a rather large percentage of us have become successful writers. We’ve produced over a dozen books and had dozens of short stories published in professional anthologies and magazines. At least half of us are still in there slugging. While the craft acquired at something like Clarion is not to be underestimated, the most important legacy to me has been the friends and professional contacts I made there. Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, was one of my Clarion instructors and gave me a thumbs-up on the novel synopsis I wrote there. It took me another six or seven years to finish my PhD, hone my craft, and get the actual novel, STAR DRAGON, on her desk.
Other stuff
Mike’s Favorite SF/F Novels in no particular order:
◦Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
◦Hyperion by Dan Simmons
◦Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
◦The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
◦Gateway by Frederick Pohl
◦Replay by Ken Grimwood
◦Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
◦Startide Rising by David Brin
◦The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
◦Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinle
Mike Brotherton writes hard science-fiction stories with well developed characters.
For a living, Mike is an observational astronomer, researching quasars and active galactic nuclei.
Combining his interest in science fiction writing and astronomy, Mike organizes the yearly Launch Pad workshop, which teaches astronomy to writers of science fiction and fantasy.
About Mike
ASTRONOMY:
When I was six, I wanted to be an astronomer or a paleontologist. When I was twelve I wanted to be a science fiction writer. I went to college at Rice University intending to get a degree in electrical engineering and work for JPL or NASA. I ended up double majoring in EE and space physics and went on to the University of Texas at Austin to study astronomy. After getting my PhD in 1996, I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Kitt Peak National Observatory. I am now an assistant professor in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming. My specialty is quasars. I’ve actually used the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Keck Telescope and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. You can find out more here .
WRITING:
Writing starts with reading. I don’t remember learning to read and don’t remember ever having difficulty with reading with one exception in the form of a nasty school librarian who told me in first grade that I “didn’t read that book.” You see, I’d taken a book from the “big stacks” and first graders weren’t supposed to be able to read those. Bitch. I started writing my first novel — something really terrible inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars books — in sixth grade. For the most part I let the writing bug idle until I was in college. I got to write a short story for a Space Colonies course my freshmen year, then did some writing on my own and also for an advanced fiction writing course my junior year. I didn’t sell anything I wrote in college but I did start learning to be professional and submitting my stories. Graduate school slowed me down for a few years but I did join a local SF/F writing group (”The Slugtribe”) and started getting serious about writing. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in the summer of 1994.
Clarion West was a wonderful experience for me though not everyone fares so well. It’s basically boot camp for writers for six weeks, writing 5-6 stories, reading and critiquing over 100 stories, living and learning intensely. I’m still in contact with many of my classmates now nearly a decade later and a rather large percentage of us have become successful writers. We’ve produced over a dozen books and had dozens of short stories published in professional anthologies and magazines. At least half of us are still in there slugging. While the craft acquired at something like Clarion is not to be underestimated, the most important legacy to me has been the friends and professional contacts I made there. Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, was one of my Clarion instructors and gave me a thumbs-up on the novel synopsis I wrote there. It took me another six or seven years to finish my PhD, hone my craft, and get the actual novel, STAR DRAGON, on her desk.
Other stuff
Mike’s Favorite SF/F Novels in no particular order:
◦Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
◦Hyperion by Dan Simmons
◦Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
◦The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
◦Gateway by Frederick Pohl
◦Replay by Ken Grimwood
◦Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
◦Startide Rising by David Brin
◦The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
◦Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinle
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
June 21, 2015
Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for the book. If you’re bound and determined to read this book, you may want to bypass this review.
This book was pretty painful to read. I didn’t like any of the characters, the story wasn’t all that interesting, and there were a lot of errors with extra words being inserted into sentences where they didn’t belong and other words missing altogether. I didn’t count the number of errors, but I would be surprised if there were less than 50. At one point I stopped reading to double check the publisher, because I thought I must have grabbed an indie book by mistake. Nope, this was published by Tor. Maybe the editor had trouble reading the book too.
The story is set in Earth’s distant future. A probe exploring deep space captures a few minutes of footage showing dragon-like creatures moving around in an accretion disk. The creatures appear to have physical properties that could help humans generate energy better if they could study one, so an organization hires a small crew of three plus two additional scientists to take a space ship out and try to capture a dragon.
It takes the characters a third of the book to arrive at the area where the dragons had been seen. Up to that point, the book is primarily about getting to know the five characters populating the ship during the long voyage into deep space. In the very beginning, they don’t seem too bad. Before long, however, I was hoping their ship would explode with all hands on board so the story could pick up with a new batch of more likeable characters who would make a second attempt.
The captain of the ship, Lena Fang, is a control freak who feels like she needs to prove her worth as captain. One of the scientists, Samuel Fisher, is a control freak himself and he’s completely obsessed with the dragons. Initially, these two hook up, but then they have a dramatic fight which just makes them each become crazier and more obsessed with their own goals than they were before. This leads them to work against each other and jeopardize the mission. We also have a slight love triangle here because the space ship’s artificial intelligence, with a personality modeled off of Ernest Hemingway, seems to fancy himself in love with the captain.
One of the other crew members hooks up with the second scientist. The voyage is going to take over a year of subjective time round trip, so the theory appears to be that everybody will surely have to pair up to stay sane and the characters waste no time in doing just that. These two are probably the least unpleasant characters in the book, but they get less “page time” than Fang and Fisher.
If you’ve been doing the math, you’ll realize we have an odd man out who’s failed to pair up with anybody. He’s none too happy to be left out because apparently he hasn’t had sex in a reaaalllly long time on account of his being busy with his long-term goal of impregnating the entire female population on Earth by releasing a virus that carries his genes. I swear I’m not making this up.
The plot itself was pretty bare-bones… Travel to place with dragons. Try to catch dragon. Discover dragons aren’t so easy to catch. Mayhem ensues. Most of the story was taken up with developing the characters, none of whom I liked, and I never really got into the plot about capturing the dragon. The only reason I’m giving this two stars is because I did manage to finish it. For me, a one-star book is typically a book so horrible I couldn’t finish it at all. This book wasn’t quite at that level, but I did consider giving up on it a few times.
This book was pretty painful to read. I didn’t like any of the characters, the story wasn’t all that interesting, and there were a lot of errors with extra words being inserted into sentences where they didn’t belong and other words missing altogether. I didn’t count the number of errors, but I would be surprised if there were less than 50. At one point I stopped reading to double check the publisher, because I thought I must have grabbed an indie book by mistake. Nope, this was published by Tor. Maybe the editor had trouble reading the book too.
The story is set in Earth’s distant future. A probe exploring deep space captures a few minutes of footage showing dragon-like creatures moving around in an accretion disk. The creatures appear to have physical properties that could help humans generate energy better if they could study one, so an organization hires a small crew of three plus two additional scientists to take a space ship out and try to capture a dragon.
It takes the characters a third of the book to arrive at the area where the dragons had been seen. Up to that point, the book is primarily about getting to know the five characters populating the ship during the long voyage into deep space. In the very beginning, they don’t seem too bad. Before long, however, I was hoping their ship would explode with all hands on board so the story could pick up with a new batch of more likeable characters who would make a second attempt.
The captain of the ship, Lena Fang, is a control freak who feels like she needs to prove her worth as captain. One of the scientists, Samuel Fisher, is a control freak himself and he’s completely obsessed with the dragons. Initially, these two hook up, but then they have a dramatic fight which just makes them each become crazier and more obsessed with their own goals than they were before. This leads them to work against each other and jeopardize the mission. We also have a slight love triangle here because the space ship’s artificial intelligence, with a personality modeled off of Ernest Hemingway, seems to fancy himself in love with the captain.
One of the other crew members hooks up with the second scientist. The voyage is going to take over a year of subjective time round trip, so the theory appears to be that everybody will surely have to pair up to stay sane and the characters waste no time in doing just that. These two are probably the least unpleasant characters in the book, but they get less “page time” than Fang and Fisher.
If you’ve been doing the math, you’ll realize we have an odd man out who’s failed to pair up with anybody. He’s none too happy to be left out because apparently he hasn’t had sex in a reaaalllly long time on account of his being busy with his long-term goal of impregnating the entire female population on Earth by releasing a virus that carries his genes. I swear I’m not making this up.
The plot itself was pretty bare-bones… Travel to place with dragons. Try to catch dragon. Discover dragons aren’t so easy to catch. Mayhem ensues. Most of the story was taken up with developing the characters, none of whom I liked, and I never really got into the plot about capturing the dragon. The only reason I’m giving this two stars is because I did manage to finish it. For me, a one-star book is typically a book so horrible I couldn’t finish it at all. This book wasn’t quite at that level, but I did consider giving up on it a few times.
March 15, 2013
A long distance probe has captured footage of a mysterious moving object in the accretion disc of a collapsed star. It seems to be an energy being. An exploration spaceship travels across the stars to capture this interstellar phenomenon, dubbed a “Star Dragon”. The story played out against the background of the mission is a psychological drama starring the five human and one AI crewmembers of the ship. Adding to the poignancy of their fate is the fact that the ship travels close to the speed of light to SS Cygni, a binary system 245 light years from earth. The trip is only a subjective 2 years for the crew, but when they return five hundred years will have passed on Earth. They have to abandon their entire existence in order to go hunting the mysterious Star Dragon.
This is a very strong story which manages to escape the technobabble trap of many such efforts. The characters are few but strongly threedimensional, each seeking his or her own place in the universe. With technological progress moving fast, they all have to contend with their doubts about what place they will have in the future. Contrasted with medical immortality, this becomes a serious issue. Will the future have a place for the individuality of humanity, or are we doomed to be replaced by AIs that are better than we? And if that happens, will we transcend to a utopian existence free of want? Is that where we want to go? Star Dragon is cautiously optimistic, and yet raises many important questions about our future. It is a vast universe and eternity is a long long time. Who knows what we will find?
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=497
This is a very strong story which manages to escape the technobabble trap of many such efforts. The characters are few but strongly threedimensional, each seeking his or her own place in the universe. With technological progress moving fast, they all have to contend with their doubts about what place they will have in the future. Contrasted with medical immortality, this becomes a serious issue. Will the future have a place for the individuality of humanity, or are we doomed to be replaced by AIs that are better than we? And if that happens, will we transcend to a utopian existence free of want? Is that where we want to go? Star Dragon is cautiously optimistic, and yet raises many important questions about our future. It is a vast universe and eternity is a long long time. Who knows what we will find?
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=497
September 14, 2020
What started off okay, turned into a sickly writing as Brotherton became obsessed with how many body mods his characters could make and still think, not of the mission, but sex, sex and more sex.
June 16, 2011
Hard scifi with great potential that falls short for me in a few crucial areas, namely writing and characterization. The writing style needs more finesse, and the science parts frequently sound too textbook-like.
Brotherton is best when he invents things rather than describes real physical phenomena. For example, the opening chapter inside the bio-AI-corporation was very interesting, and the description of the space wisps grabbed my imagination. But when it came to real physical phenomena, they were explained very drily, and not well. I feel like I ought to understand what accretion and inner Lagrangian point is, but I don't. (And I have a B.S. in Engineering, and certainly knew what a Lagrangian was at one point, but way too much in this book went over my head. At least the course in Aerospace Dynamics (thanks, Prof. Kutt!) made me feel more comfortable when they were talking about travel trajectories.) On the other hand, I'm glad the author has a phD in the topic, so I could trust him. I feel that if he extrapolated more, inserted more fantasy & imagination, his science background would ground it in "hardness" and make it awesome.
The writing was at first better than I expected, and I liked that he gave characters backstories and motivations, but as the book developed, they really flattened for me, felt one-note, and unrealistic. If a group of 5 people are on a spaceship for a year, would they really not talk to each other at all? Some phrasing could use more work, I noticed that he tends to repeat certain words in a paragraph. I was also hugely turned off when he used the phrase "blithering idiot" to describe a woman flinging her arms around her lover, who's about to go on a suicide mission. To be fair, the character who thought so had a major head injury, so maybe that was a way to indicate the guy was seriously mentally impaired. Still, it grated.
The good things. I read the book, all of it, in 2 days, without skipping or skimming. In the middle, I get really interested and even peeked at the end, and then still read it all the way through. And that is saying a LOT for me. The plot is interesting and it moves. The idea of magnetic dragons living in plasma is awesome, and I wish it was explored more, in greater detail. What do they eat? How do they reproduce? I want this writer to grow & mature.
Brotherton is best when he invents things rather than describes real physical phenomena. For example, the opening chapter inside the bio-AI-corporation was very interesting, and the description of the space wisps grabbed my imagination. But when it came to real physical phenomena, they were explained very drily, and not well. I feel like I ought to understand what accretion and inner Lagrangian point is, but I don't. (And I have a B.S. in Engineering, and certainly knew what a Lagrangian was at one point, but way too much in this book went over my head. At least the course in Aerospace Dynamics (thanks, Prof. Kutt!) made me feel more comfortable when they were talking about travel trajectories.) On the other hand, I'm glad the author has a phD in the topic, so I could trust him. I feel that if he extrapolated more, inserted more fantasy & imagination, his science background would ground it in "hardness" and make it awesome.
The writing was at first better than I expected, and I liked that he gave characters backstories and motivations, but as the book developed, they really flattened for me, felt one-note, and unrealistic. If a group of 5 people are on a spaceship for a year, would they really not talk to each other at all? Some phrasing could use more work, I noticed that he tends to repeat certain words in a paragraph. I was also hugely turned off when he used the phrase "blithering idiot" to describe a woman flinging her arms around her lover, who's about to go on a suicide mission. To be fair, the character who thought so had a major head injury, so maybe that was a way to indicate the guy was seriously mentally impaired. Still, it grated.
The good things. I read the book, all of it, in 2 days, without skipping or skimming. In the middle, I get really interested and even peeked at the end, and then still read it all the way through. And that is saying a LOT for me. The plot is interesting and it moves. The idea of magnetic dragons living in plasma is awesome, and I wish it was explored more, in greater detail. What do they eat? How do they reproduce? I want this writer to grow & mature.
December 4, 2008
“Star Dragon” (Tor, $26.95, 448 pages) is an old-school book. The two protagonists are manly men, heroic men, though the younger has no idea what to do with relationships – but he does occasionally think about them. The older one has to abandon his family to go off and try to save the world (literally), and does so with regret. Once embarked on the mission, though, he’s much more focused on figuring out how to control a star that shoots at its own planets and their moons.
This is Mike Brotherton’s second book, and writes much like the professor he is – that’s good when it comes to carefully realized scientific setups, but not so good when it comes to a page-turning narrative or a strong sense of character. That means that Boomers who grew up reading hard-science scifi will feel right at home, but those expecting a little more nuance might not be as entertained. You pays your money and you takes your choice …
This is Mike Brotherton’s second book, and writes much like the professor he is – that’s good when it comes to carefully realized scientific setups, but not so good when it comes to a page-turning narrative or a strong sense of character. That means that Boomers who grew up reading hard-science scifi will feel right at home, but those expecting a little more nuance might not be as entertained. You pays your money and you takes your choice …
June 8, 2013
When people can travel to the far reaches of the galaxy and can change their bodies and live nearly forever, what will give them reason to get up in the morning? How about the chance to be the first to study possibly intelligent alien life? Solving the mystery of the star dragons is worth leaving everything and everyone the characters have ever known behind forever--or is it? Each character has their own reasons for taking this journey that will test their psychological and scientific adaptability against a strange alien life and each other. Few writers have the scientific knowledge to create such a fantastic and yet plausible future world, but Astronomer Mike Brotherton pulled it off beautifully. From now on, any time I see a nova through the telescope, I'll be wondering if star dragons might really exist.
May 16, 2011
Mike Brotheron's "Star Dragon" is heavy on tech/science/astronomy, and I admit I sometimes had trouble following all of the information that was being thrown at me. But given Brotherton's training in astronomy and his passion for his field, I had no doubt that his material was dead on.
It's been years since I last read Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," and I haven't (yet) read "Moby Dick." Brotherton's "Star Dragon" echoes both of these powerful tales in the relentless pursuit of prey, and the ethical questions and personal doubts that arise along the way.
I've already passed this book along to another avid sci-fi fan, and I do recommend this title to others.
It's been years since I last read Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," and I haven't (yet) read "Moby Dick." Brotherton's "Star Dragon" echoes both of these powerful tales in the relentless pursuit of prey, and the ethical questions and personal doubts that arise along the way.
I've already passed this book along to another avid sci-fi fan, and I do recommend this title to others.
July 25, 2021
Star Dragon is about a human expedition to another star system. It is mostly concerned with interpersonal complications of the crew. Much of the book could just aswell be about a sailship crossing the oceans on earth around year 1700. The SF content consists of the author inventing tech as needed and some very diffuse aliens. Star Dragon gets a plus for an original setup but as it unfolds the plot is weak, unrealistic and predictable. Read the Grimm brothers instead.
March 9, 2012
I would give this 2.5 stars if I could. It had a great "hard" sf basis, and a potentially decent storyline. However, the characterizations were poor, unfortunately, in my opinion. It wasn't a horrible read, but definitely not a keeper for my library, either.
December 24, 2018
This book is one of my earliest ventures into sci-fi and was crucial to my desire for imaginative things to read. From a future in which humanity achieves technical-immortality through biotechnology to dragons who love in the accretion disk of a binary star system (made of star stuff themselves), this book has wonderful world-building, a plot with a clear goal. But it lacks a compelling cast of characters. The primary of theses are thrust into a romance that... feels terrible and off. The captain of the ship feels like a stereotype of 'strong woman secretly want to submit to a man' and feels the need to hide her enjoyment of pink and soft things. Her love interest is a man so obsessed with his work that he gets offended when 6 seconds of his time is wasted waiting. 6 seconds. Jesus. The other characters are otherwise well developed and with clear differences in personality.
Humanity also seems to have become rather conceited after a achieving immortality, and upon encountering the dragon species, that may or may not be sapient, they figure that there is no issue with killing a few for the sake of their goal. Lets be clear here, this species might be sapient (which is implied later in the book that they are!), but the cast (save for one, and only temporarily) has concluded that it doesn't matter since they can't tell whether or not they are. Their inherently exploitative goal is considered more important than the existence of the dragons.
An interesting scenario for this book, but not a very optimistic one in terms of basic decency towards non-human living beings.
Humanity also seems to have become rather conceited after a achieving immortality, and upon encountering the dragon species, that may or may not be sapient, they figure that there is no issue with killing a few for the sake of their goal. Lets be clear here, this species might be sapient (which is implied later in the book that they are!), but the cast (save for one, and only temporarily) has concluded that it doesn't matter since they can't tell whether or not they are. Their inherently exploitative goal is considered more important than the existence of the dragons.
An interesting scenario for this book, but not a very optimistic one in terms of basic decency towards non-human living beings.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2025
I wanted a cool story about plasma dragons. I got weird zero-g sex stuff.
June 2, 2012
I never though I'd need to combine bookshelves for both Dragons and Sci-fi!
Basic Outline: - A probe sent to SS Cygni records 4 minutes of what looks to be a dragon in the accretion disk of the double stars 245 light years away. A ship is sent to investigate and attempt to bring a dragon back with them. While 2 years will pass for the crew members, nearly 500 years will have passed on Earth.
I couldn't resist this as a free download, I've gone on a bit of a download frenzy recently and have a lot of free books to get through. This is one of the better ones! I thoroughly enjoyed this, it was a fairly steady and engaging read. I did feel at times though that there was more focus on science stuff for the sake of it. While I love a good hard sci-fi read, I thought there were points where some of the human story was overlooked for the sake of science.
There were a couple of points that I thought were skimmed over but thought more focus would have been interesting. The major point is that the journey is going to take almost 500 years but it doesn't seem to be a big deal. This "time travel" (for lack of a better term) does get brief mentions where one character isn't sure about going on a trip where there would be a culture shock on return. The Captain, Fang, dwells on the issue a little more. Is she going to be obselete when she returns after a trip out of the Solar System? Another crew member wants to travel through time as far as possible. I thought missing chunks of time from Earth would be a bigger issue. Afterall, 500 years is a long time for Human civilisation. Will it still be there? It does get a one line conclusion at the end but I thought it would dwell on the minds of the crew more.
I wasn't quite sure what to make of the heavily biological future. Parts of the ship, the beds, the chairs, rugs, cleaners and repair equipment is biological in origin! It's not made clear of this is standard, or just because the trip is funded by a bio-tech company.
There isn't a large cast of characters in this book but rather than being limiting, it does allow for more focus on their own journeys. All members of the crew do get some focus but I thought that only two of them had any major kind of growth throughout the journey. The book does focus more on these two. Fisher's story concluded nicely at the end but some of his behaviour earlier came as a surprise and his motivations didn't always seem to make any sense.
I won't mention too much about the dragons, but the descriptions were very visual. I loved the descriptiveness of the star system and dragons. The comparison to the sea was quite poetic. I'm not sure how I feel about the conclustion to the dragons, it all seemed a little to anticlimactic and convenient. I would have liked to have seen the Earth they returned to, but that wasn't part of the dragons' story.
Basic Outline: - A probe sent to SS Cygni records 4 minutes of what looks to be a dragon in the accretion disk of the double stars 245 light years away. A ship is sent to investigate and attempt to bring a dragon back with them. While 2 years will pass for the crew members, nearly 500 years will have passed on Earth.
I couldn't resist this as a free download, I've gone on a bit of a download frenzy recently and have a lot of free books to get through. This is one of the better ones! I thoroughly enjoyed this, it was a fairly steady and engaging read. I did feel at times though that there was more focus on science stuff for the sake of it. While I love a good hard sci-fi read, I thought there were points where some of the human story was overlooked for the sake of science.
There were a couple of points that I thought were skimmed over but thought more focus would have been interesting. The major point is that the journey is going to take almost 500 years but it doesn't seem to be a big deal. This "time travel" (for lack of a better term) does get brief mentions where one character isn't sure about going on a trip where there would be a culture shock on return. The Captain, Fang, dwells on the issue a little more. Is she going to be obselete when she returns after a trip out of the Solar System? Another crew member wants to travel through time as far as possible. I thought missing chunks of time from Earth would be a bigger issue. Afterall, 500 years is a long time for Human civilisation. Will it still be there? It does get a one line conclusion at the end but I thought it would dwell on the minds of the crew more.
I wasn't quite sure what to make of the heavily biological future. Parts of the ship, the beds, the chairs, rugs, cleaners and repair equipment is biological in origin! It's not made clear of this is standard, or just because the trip is funded by a bio-tech company.
There isn't a large cast of characters in this book but rather than being limiting, it does allow for more focus on their own journeys. All members of the crew do get some focus but I thought that only two of them had any major kind of growth throughout the journey. The book does focus more on these two. Fisher's story concluded nicely at the end but some of his behaviour earlier came as a surprise and his motivations didn't always seem to make any sense.
I won't mention too much about the dragons, but the descriptions were very visual. I loved the descriptiveness of the star system and dragons. The comparison to the sea was quite poetic. I'm not sure how I feel about the conclustion to the dragons, it all seemed a little to anticlimactic and convenient. I would have liked to have seen the Earth they returned to, but that wasn't part of the dragons' story.
May 13, 2008
(Let me get one thing out of the way. It doesn't actually affect my enjoyment of the novel, but Star Dragon is a lousy title. Your first impression of a book should not be that this is a 1950s/1960s Andre Norton juvenile, unless of course it is actually written by Andre Norton. Thank you.)
You don't see many hard SF books these days ("hard" meaning where the existing known physical laws of science haven't been overturned and the author makes every attempt to play fair with them), but Brotherton has written one, and it is pretty good.
An robotic probe sent to SS Cygnus (245 light years away) has found a life form in the most unexpected place: the accretion disk of a dwarf star. Even more startling is that the images indicate the dragon-shaped creatures are able to use fusion as a source of energy. A life form that can survive in this environment, let alone one that is a living fusion reactor, is worth studying and capturing, and an expedition is assembled.
People in this society routinely modify their bodies, and have greatly extended lifetimes, but even so a 500 year round trip is nothing to sneeze at. Even though the reader gets the message that eccentric individualism is the norm, even for this society the crew members stand out.
Much of the plot involves the crew interaction, as it should, but it feels a little contrived (what, no one could spring for a psychiatrist package for the AI?). And although Brotherton isn't bad at describing the environment the star dragons live in, he lacks the pastoral poetry of Arthur C. Clarke or the clarity of expression of Hal Clement. Still, for a first novel this is quite good, and I'm going to look up Spider Star next.
You don't see many hard SF books these days ("hard" meaning where the existing known physical laws of science haven't been overturned and the author makes every attempt to play fair with them), but Brotherton has written one, and it is pretty good.
An robotic probe sent to SS Cygnus (245 light years away) has found a life form in the most unexpected place: the accretion disk of a dwarf star. Even more startling is that the images indicate the dragon-shaped creatures are able to use fusion as a source of energy. A life form that can survive in this environment, let alone one that is a living fusion reactor, is worth studying and capturing, and an expedition is assembled.
People in this society routinely modify their bodies, and have greatly extended lifetimes, but even so a 500 year round trip is nothing to sneeze at. Even though the reader gets the message that eccentric individualism is the norm, even for this society the crew members stand out.
Much of the plot involves the crew interaction, as it should, but it feels a little contrived (what, no one could spring for a psychiatrist package for the AI?). And although Brotherton isn't bad at describing the environment the star dragons live in, he lacks the pastoral poetry of Arthur C. Clarke or the clarity of expression of Hal Clement. Still, for a first novel this is quite good, and I'm going to look up Spider Star next.
February 11, 2011
Started reading Ebooks lately, due to the traveling, and to the fact that I don't really see myself carrying tons and tons of books with me as I travel this beautiful planet of ours. It's absolutely amazing to me to have access to almost all the books ever published in electronic format. Seems to me that we are definitely getting ready for a life in outer space, lightening our load as we take our spirits (so far) out of this solar system, and dive into the unending universe.
About this book though, hm hm, I LIKE. It's a bit old in style, it ramps you up and then delivers the "bang" only partially. But I think that's only because I am reading it after reading contemporary sci-fi, which is full of action, thrill, and excitement all around, with faster and faster action.
If you are to look at this book alone, suspended in time, this book is worth the time it demands.
Mike Brotherton knows his science-or at least it seems like that to the "couch scientist" that I am. Technical terms abound, but don't overwhelm the story, and you can easily follow the 500 year journey of this crew. Star Dragon is a book with great and innovative ideas in space travel too. So read on my friends, because that is a sure way to keep your brains working and pushing mankind into the new way of thinking.
Peace!
Star Dragon
About this book though, hm hm, I LIKE. It's a bit old in style, it ramps you up and then delivers the "bang" only partially. But I think that's only because I am reading it after reading contemporary sci-fi, which is full of action, thrill, and excitement all around, with faster and faster action.
If you are to look at this book alone, suspended in time, this book is worth the time it demands.
Mike Brotherton knows his science-or at least it seems like that to the "couch scientist" that I am. Technical terms abound, but don't overwhelm the story, and you can easily follow the 500 year journey of this crew. Star Dragon is a book with great and innovative ideas in space travel too. So read on my friends, because that is a sure way to keep your brains working and pushing mankind into the new way of thinking.
Peace!
Star Dragon
April 20, 2012
Just what I needed after a seemingly endless string of fantasy and paranormal books - an old school, Analog style, hard-SF adventure with some great Big Science concepts. The centerpiece are the titular dragons, life forms discovered in the accretion disk of SS Cygni, and the expedition/safari to bag one and bring it back. Along the way there's an interesting approach to wormhole-powered slower-than-light travel, and AI based on the personality of Ernest Hemingway, and an Earth future totally transformed by biotechnology.
As for the biotech, I don't quite buy that one aspect of Brotherton's world building. I'm sure there's a revolution of some sort coming down the road, and that given the option people would start modifying their own bodies in new and shocking ways, but some of the applications used in the book seem a little "jet-packy," if that makes sense. (Living creatures being used as beds and chairs, for instance.)
What makes the book kind of a slog through the middle section, though, are the dysfunctional characters. Flawed characters are always good for drama (and only extreme personalities would willingly volunteer for a 500-year mission) but Star Dragon's cast is so deeply messed up as to be completely unsympathetic for a big chunk of the book, and Brotherton seems to spend a lot of time writing from the point of view of the most detestable, least likable characters in the cast. The finale is suitably rousing, however, and most of the characters achieve some measure of redemption by the end.
As for the biotech, I don't quite buy that one aspect of Brotherton's world building. I'm sure there's a revolution of some sort coming down the road, and that given the option people would start modifying their own bodies in new and shocking ways, but some of the applications used in the book seem a little "jet-packy," if that makes sense. (Living creatures being used as beds and chairs, for instance.)
What makes the book kind of a slog through the middle section, though, are the dysfunctional characters. Flawed characters are always good for drama (and only extreme personalities would willingly volunteer for a 500-year mission) but Star Dragon's cast is so deeply messed up as to be completely unsympathetic for a big chunk of the book, and Brotherton seems to spend a lot of time writing from the point of view of the most detestable, least likable characters in the cast. The finale is suitably rousing, however, and most of the characters achieve some measure of redemption by the end.
July 9, 2012
Books like this are amazing. The world-building is fantastic, the best kind of world is one you never would have thought of. In this world, bio-tech has been mastered: humans modify there body's to there whims -- from mind-mods that let you stay awake for days to Frisbees attached to your finger. There are people with feathery pink fingers and ear-frills. And the office buildings are alive. Set in this world, one ship sets out at relativistic speeds for a star 250 light-years away. When they get back, what will be two years for them will be five hundred for people on earth. And that's just the first two chapters...
September 3, 2013
I wasn't sure when it started out but it soon drew me in. It has a lot of interesting ideas and the characters rotated and were just crazy enough to keep me going. At first I thought the crew of 5 all a bit off. But as the book points out in the beginning, anyone that would trade 500 Earth years to go to deep space must be at least a little bit odd. The Moby Dick references swam well and I thought I was going to hate the computer with the Ernest Hemingway personality but like the characters it grew on me.
June 25, 2012
While this book is interesting in the use of science, some of the details are almost to out there. Some of the forms of science used are over the top, while I cannot discount the possibility of them actually happening, it is still somewhat difficult to suspend doubt. Now, don't be afraid to give this book a read, it is a very good book, just needs suspension of doubt in quantity.
November 8, 2013
This book could have used a little more proofreading: clangers like "half a millennia" are just jarring. But it combines a hard sf storyline with good character development. Spoiler alert; there are two biologists in the crew of five. How come I figured out that there was an egg fifty pages before either of them do? Still, a good read.
June 10, 2015
I found this book a little hard to get into. It's well written and easy to read but I found myself regularly going back over parts I had just read in order to figure out what had just happened. It's probably just me but it ruined the flow and thus I was not really able to get into the story - the premise of which is excellent.
September 16, 2014
Some really exciting action pieces but I am not sure it was totally intentional that all the characters acted like mentally disturbed teenagers even though some were hundreds of years old. Yes this kind of trip does not bring out the most stable people, but their was some really questionable judgement here. It seemed like it was trying to be profound, but that aspect fell flat for me.
December 6, 2016
Great concept but the execution was not as stellar. I wanted to like the characters but they were sufficiently dysfunctional as to be problematic...and I felt the punches got pulled in the case of Henderson, for one. But quite workmanlike and a solid old-style hard sf book. Definitely a product of its era (2005).
December 5, 2008
The writing reminds me a lot of Poul Anderson. It tries to look like hard scifi, even if I am not very convinced by the specific technobabble in it, but that could just be me. Not bad, not world-changing.
April 2, 2010
Not a bad book, but it was missing something that I couldn't quite put my finger on that stopped it from being truly great. Still entertaining and fairly well done all the way around, though. Worth a read if you're a hardcore SF fan.
August 14, 2010
Chairbeasts, ruglings, and bedbeasts?! I never imagined the future could be so 'organic'! Mike Brotherton's characters are believable, and the setting is fantastic. Best of all, this book is available for free! I read it on my Android phone using the Aldiko app (another great find).
April 8, 2011
The story was interesting, and so were the characters. I wish the author would have spent less time with romantic relationships. I felt those were superfluous to the story. That's one of the main reasons I like the books in the young adult genre much better.
March 6, 2009
I liked this book, but I only gave it three stars because it has a lot of swearing. If swearing isn't something that bothers you, than read it, it is very interesting!
April 5, 2009
Written by an astrophysicist, set in SS Cyg; the plot was not particularly to my taste, though.
September 4, 2012
This was my kind of book! Heavy on the science with a believable storyline.
May 2, 2014
Great book
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