Pg. 69: Mike Brotherton's "Spider Star"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Mike Brotherton's Spider Star.

About the book, from the publisher:

The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an alien race, a race gone for hundreds of thousands of years. But then an archeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon: a weapon that will destroy the entire colony, and its star, if they cannot deactivate it.

Evidence at the site suggests that the weapon was created for the ancient Argonauts by another race, a race of traders. And within that evidence are a map of their interstellar trading empire, and the coordinates of their main trading station. Although the information is a hundred thousand years out of date, the only hope for Argo is to send a ship and crew into the unknown, to try to negotiate for a way to shut down the weapon.

Among the praise for Mike Brotherton's work:

“Humans on the planet Argo have long used the alien technology left by the world's former inhabitants, called Argonauts. When a group of archaeologists accidentally triggers a doomsday weapon that must be deactivated or it will destroy the human colony, the planet sends out a ship and crew on a desperate mission-to find the ancient trading race who had created the weapon for the Argonauts. Brotherton, the author of Star Dragon and an astronomy professor, writes convincingly of a distant future, crafting personal stories out of an oversize adventure.”
--Library Journal

“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. An amazingly detailed world and a story full of scientific wonder.”

--Publishers Weekly on Star 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...a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard-science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love.”

--Booklist, starred review

Read the prologue and first four chapters of Spider Star. Learn more about the author and his work at Mike Brotherton's website.

Mike Brotherton is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. He is also the author of the novel, Star Dragon.

The Page 69 Test: Spider Star.

--Marshal Zeringue