Star Dragon

By Mike Brotherton

Book Overview

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 eachother, 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765307588
• ISBN13: 9780765307583
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Promising first novel

The physics was first class, the premise intriguing, and the characters reasonably well developed and believable. The pace was a little slow at first, but sped up toward the end, and suspense developed. There were no major flaws, but it would be hard to identify with any of the characters, so you are unlikely to be as involved as you might be with, for instance, a David Weber, David Drake, or Dave Duncan character. If Mike writes another book I will buy it. He is going to get better.

better on every level, even better than that

Mike Brotherton's STAR DRAGON is what I always wished for in a scifi story. Like attending a Bucky Fuller lecture with 3D graphics. This story exceeds on every level. The 6 main characters are brilliant, witty, likeable, fully developed, interesting, fantastic, cool etc. The story theme is outlandish, cutting edge, almost beyond our imagining, yet fascinating. The minds and bodies of the characters, the ship, space, the destination, the quest, the science... ALL are described in detail within detail within detail. The action is totally unpredictable yet sensible; the outcome grand and personal and thoughtful all at the same time. I could understand about 5% of the mind-bogglingly difficult physics described by Brotherton constantly throughout this story; but that does not slow the action or the inter-actions in any way. Other writers could learn volumes by dissecting this story and the art of the writer. I proclaim this story a prophetic classic that will not be fully appreciated for many years, and then maybe only by really imaginative physicists.

Hard SF that propels the reader along.

This was a simple, old fashioned, and well-told yarn that in style and composition resembles many of the stories I read from authors of the 1950's with its concentration on plot over character development. I've always preferred action over endless dialogue, and this one struck the right balance for me. I also enjoyed the science that was introduced along the way, and found the creature to be plausible. It reminded me of Neal Asher's creativity in creature creation in his Cormac books, and some of Peter Hamilton's creations too. For whatever idiosyncratic reasons, I enjoyed it a lot.

A Tight Science Fiction Novel

I found that Star Dragon gave many themes thoughtful treatment over the course of a relatively compact novel. An AI struggles with its desgner limited awareness and artificial recollection of a past human life, human characters deal with the specie's new found immortality in radically different ways, and a 'star drive' which balances singularities as a means of propulsion are some of the themes which are well thought out and treated with depth. Overall I found the plot well paced and the characters' varied approaches to life and the stresses of the vayage intersting and well developed.

Hard SF that delivers a rip-roaring story!

That Michael Brotherton has a PhD in astronomy means this book is chock full of good science and mind-blowing astronomical details. But you don't need a graduate degree to enjoy the exciting adventure story he tells in this book or the intriguing characters. If you're a space-science fan, or enjoy manly adventure in the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, I believe you'll enjoy this book.